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STORIES 
OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


BY 


ANTON TCHEKOFF 
An Tons JEXOBR 


TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY 


MARIAN FELL 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1915 


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CoryrriGutT, 1914, sr 


PHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


Published May, 1914 


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STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


OVERSEASONED 


N arriving at Deadville Station,|Gleb Smirnoff,) ~~ 
the surveyor, found that the farm to which 
his business called him still lay some thirty or forty 
miles farther on. If the driver should be sober and 
the horses could stand up, the distance would be less 
than thirty miles; with a fuddled driver and old skates 
for horses, it might amount to fifty. 

“Will you tell me, please, where I can get some 
post-horses?”’ asked the surveyor of the station-master. 

“What? Post-horses? You won’t find even a 
stray dog within a hundred miles of here, let alone 
post-horses! Where do you want to go?” 

“To Devkino, General Hohotoff’s farm.” 

“Well,” yawned the station-master, “go round be- 
hind the station; there are some peasants there that 
sometimes take passengers.” 

The surveyor sighed and betook himself wearily to 
the back of the station. There, after a long search 
and much disputing and agitating, he at last secured 
a huge, lusty peasant, surly, pock-marked, wearing a 
ragged coat of grey cloth and straw shoes. 

3 


t STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“What a devil of a wagon you have!” grumbled the 
surveyor, climbing in. “I can’t tell which is the front 
and which is the back.” 

“Can’t you? The horse’s tail is in front and where 
your honour sits is the back.” 

The pony was young but gaunt, with sprawling legs 
and ragged ears. When the driver stood up and beat 
it with his rope whip, it only shook its head; when he 
rated it soundly and beat it a second time the wagon 
groaned and shuddered as if in a fever; at the third 
stroke the wagon rocked, and at the fourth, moved 
slowly away. 

“Will it be like this all the way?” asked the sur- 
veyor, violently shaken and wondering at the ability 
of Russian drivers for combining the gentle crawl of a 
tortoise with the most soul-racking bumping. 

“We'll get there,” the driver soothed him. “The 
little mare is young and spry. Only let her once get 
started and there is no stopping her. Get up, you 
devil!” 

They left the station at dusk. To the right stretched 
a cold, dark plain so boundless and vast that if you 
crossed it no doubt you would come to the Other 
End of Nowhere. The cold autumn sunset burnt out 
slowly where the edge of it melted into the sky. To 
the left, in the fading light, some little mounds rose up 
that might have been either trees or last year’s hay- 
stacks. The surveyor could not see what lay ahead, 
for here the whole landscape was blotted out by the 


OVERSEASONED 5 


broad, clumsy back of the driver. The air was still, 
but frosty and cold. 

“What desolation!” thought the surveyor, trying to 
cover his ears with his coat collar; “not a hut nor a 
house! If we were beset and robbed here not a soul 
would know it, not if we were to fire cannons. And 
that driver isn’t trustworthy. What a devil of a back 
he has! It is as much as a man’s life is worth even to 
touch a child of nature like that with his forefinger! 
He has an ill-looking snout, like a wild animal. Look 
here, friend,” asked the eyor, “what’s your name?” 

“My name? | Klim.” 

“Well, Klim, how is it about here? Not dangerous? 
No one plays any pranks, do they?” 

“Oh, Lord preserve us, no! Who would there be 
to play pranks?” 

“That’s right. But, in any case, I have three re- 
volvers here”—the surveyor lied—“ and, you know, it’s 
a bad plan to joke with a revolver. One revolver is a 
match for ten robbers.” 

Night fell. Suddenly the wagon creaked, groaned, 
trembled, and turned to the left, as if against its will. 

“Where is he taking me now?” thought the surveyor. 
“He was going straight ahead, and now he has suddenly 
turned to the left. I am afraid the scoundrel is carry- 
ing me off to some lonely thicket-—and—and—things 
have been known to happen. Listen!” he said to the 
driver, “so you say there is no danger here? Well, 
that’s a pity. I love a good fight with robbers. I am 


6 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


small and sickly to look at, but I have the strength of 
an ox. Three robbers attacked me once, and what 
do you think? I shook one of them so that—well, it 
killed him. The other two I had sent to hard labour 
in Siberia. I can’t think where all my strength comes 
from. I could take a big rascal like you in one hand 
—and—and—skin him!” 

Klim looked round at the surveyor, blinked all over 
his face, and dealt his pony a blow. 

“Yes, my friend,” continued the surveyor, “Heaven 
help the robber that falls into my hands! Not only 
would he be left without arms or legs, but he would 
have to answer for his crimes in court, where all the 
judges and lawyers are friends of mine. I am a gov- 
ernment official, and a very important one. When I 
am travelling like this the government knows it and 
keeps an eye on me to see that no one does me any 
harm. There are policemen and police captains hid- 
den in the bushes all along the road. Stop! Stop!” 
yelled the surveyor suddenly. “Where are you going? 
Where are you taking me to?” 

“Can’t you see? Into the wood.” 

“So he is,”’ thought the surveyor. “I was frightened, 
I mustn’t show my feelings; he has already seen that I 
am afraid of him. What makes him look around at 
me so often? He must be meditating something. At 
first we barely moved, and now we are flying. Listen, 
Klim, why do you hurry your horse so?” 

“T am not hurrying her; she is running away of her 


OVERSEASONED 7 


own accord. When once she begins running away, 
nothing will stop her. She is sorry herself that her 
legs are made that way.” 

“That’s a lie, my friend, I can see it’s a lie. I 
advise you not to go so fast. Hold your horse in, do 
you hear? Hold him in!” 

«ce Why?” 

“Because—because—I have four friends following 
me from the station. I want them to catch up. They 
promised to catch me up in this wood. It will be 
jollier travelling with them. They are big, strong 
fellows, every one of them has a revolver. Why do 
you look round and jump about as if you were sitting 
on a tack? Hey? See here, I—I—there is nothing 
about me worth looking at, there is nothing interest- 
ing about me in the least—unless it is my revolvers! 
Here, if you want to see them I'll take them out and 
show them to you—let me get them.” 

The surveyor pretended to be searching in his pockets, 
and at that moment something happened which not 
even his worst fears had led him to expect. Klim 
suddenly threw himself out of the wagon and ran off 
on all fours through the forest. 

“Help!” he shouted. “Help! Take my horse, take 
my wagon, accursed one, only spare me my soul! 
Help!” 

The sound of his hurrying footsteps died away, the 
dry leaves rustled, all was still. When this unexpected 
judgment fell on him, the surveyor’s first act was to 


8 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


stop the horse; then he settled himself more comfort- 
ably in the wagon and began to think. 

“So he has taken fright and made off, the fool! 
Well, what shall I do now? I don’t know the way, so 
I can’t go on alone, and, anyway, if I did, it would look 
as if I had stolen his horse. What shall I do? Klim! 
Klim!” 

“Klim!”’ answered the echo. 

At the idea of spending the whole night alone in a 
dark forest, listening to the wolves, the echo, and the 
snorting of the lean pony, the surveyor felt the goose- 
flesh running up and down his spine. 

“Klim!” he yelled. “Dear old Klim! Good old 
Klim! Where are you?” 

For two hours he called, and it was not until he had 
lost his voice and resigned himself to the thought of 
a night in the forest that a faint breeze brought him 
the sound of a groan. 

*“*Klim, is that you, old man? Come, Klim, let us 
start!” 

*You—you'll kill me!” 

“Why, Klim, I was only joking, old chap; upon my 
word I was. Fancy my carrying revolvers with me! 
I lied like that because I was afraid. Do let us start; 
I am frozen!” . 

Klim, thinking, no doubt, that a real robber would 
have made off long ago with the horse and wagon, 
came out of the forest and approached his fare with 
caution. 


OVERSEASONED 9 


“What are you afraid of, idiot? I was only joking, 
and you are afraid of me! Get in!” 

“Lord, Mister,” muttered Klim, climbing into the 
wagon, “if I had foreseen this I wouldn’t have taken 
you for a hundred roubles. You have nearly scared 
me to death!” 

Klim beat his pony—the wagon shuddered; Klim 
beat him again—the wagon rocked; at the fourth stroke, 
as the wagon moved slowly away, the surveyor pulled 
his coat collar over his ears and abandoned himself 
to meditation. 

Neither Klim nor the road seemed dangerous now. 


THE NIGHT BEFORE EASTER 


WAS standing on the bank of the Goltva waiting 

for the ferry-boat to come across from the other 
side. At most times the Goltva is a silent and pensive 
little river sparkling shyly behind a rank growth of 
rushes, but now a whole lake lay spread before me. 
The swelling spring floods had topped both banks and 
drowned the riverside for a long way inland, taking 
possession of gardens, meadows, and marshes, so that 
here and there only a solitary bush or poplar-tree was 
seen sticking up above the surface like a rough rock 
in the darkness. 

The weather, I thought, was gorgeous. The night 
was dark, but I could, nevertheless, distinguish the 
water, the trees, and any one standing near me. The 
world was lit by stars, which were scattered without 
number over the whole sky. I don’t remember ever 
having seen so many stars. You literally could not 
have inserted a finger-tip between them. There were 
big ones the size of a goose’s egg and little ones the 
size of a hemp-seed; they had all come out in the sky, 
to the last one, to celebrate Easter in holiday splendour, 
washed, fresh, and joyous, and all gently twinkled 
their rays. The sky was reflected in the river, and the 

10 


THE NIGHT BEFORE EASTER ll 


stars bathed themselves in its depths and trembled on 
its ripples. The air was still and warm. Far away, 
in the impenetrable darkness on the other shore, burnt 
a few bright-red fires. 

A couple of steps away from me I made out the dark 
figure of a man, in a high sheepskin hat, carrying a 
gnarled stick. 

“How slow the ferry is in coming!” I said. 

“It is time it was here,” answered the dark figure. 

“Are you waiting for it, too?”’ 

“No; I am just waiting,” yawned the peasant. “I 
want to see the “lumination. I would go across, only 
I haven’t five copecks for the ferry.” 

“T’ll give you five copecks.” 

“No, thank you kindly; you can keep them and 
burn a candle for me when you reach the monastery. 
It will be better so, and I will stand here. And that 
ferry-boat hasn’t come yet! Has it sunk?” 

The peasant went down to the water’s edge, took 
hold of the cable, and called out: “Jerome! Je-rome!” 

As if in answer to his cry, the slow booming of a 
great bell came to us from the other shore, a deep, 
muffled note, like the lowest string of a double bass, 
and it seemed as if the night itself were groaning. 
The next moment a cannon was fired. The sound of 
it rolled through the darkness and stopped some- 
where behind my back. The peasant took off his hat 
and crossed himself. 

“Christ has risen!” he said. 


12 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


The vibrations of the first shot had hardly sub- 
sided before a second was heard, then a third one di- 
rectly after that, and the darkness was filled with an 
incessant, shuddering rumble. New fires blazed up 
near the red ones, and all danced and flashed together 
turbulently. 

“‘Je-rome!”” came a faint, long-drawn cry. 

“They are calling from the other shore,” said the 
peasant. “That means that the ferry-boat isn’t there, 
either. Jerome must be asleep.” 

The fires and the velvet notes of the bell were calling; 
I was beginning to lose my patience and my temper; 
at last, peering into the thick darkness, I saw the shape 
of something that looked very much like a gallows. 
It was the long-expected ferry-boat. It came so slowly 
that if its outline had not gradually grown sharper 
one might have fancied it was standing still or moving 
toward the other shore. 

“Jerome! Be quick!” shouted my peasant. “A 
gentleman is waiting!” 

The ferry-boat slipped up to the bank, rocked, 
creaked, and stopped. A tall man was standing on it 
holding the cable; he wore the cassock and conical 
hat of a monk. 

“What made you soslow in coming?” I asked, jump- 
ing on board. 

“Forgive me,” answered Jerome. “Is there no one 
else?” 

**No one.” 


THE NIGHT BEFORE EASTER 13 


Jerome|took the cable in both hands, bent himself 
into the form of a question-mark, and gave a grunt. 
The ferry-boat creaked and rocked; the form of the 
peasant in the high hat slowly disappeared; we were 
off. Jerome soon straightened himself and began to 
work with one hand. We were silent and fixed our 
eyes on the shore toward which we were floating. 
There the “ *lumination” which the peasant was ex- 
pecting had already begun. Great barrels of pitch 
blazed at the water’s edge, and their reflection, red as 
from the rising moon, ran out in a broad streak to 
meet us. The burning barrels lit up the smoke that 
rose from them and the human figures that flashed in 
and out among them, but around and behind them, 
where the velvet notes came from, lay an impenetra- 
ble blackness. Suddenly, cleaving the night, a rocket 
shot up to heaven like a golden ribbon, curved, and, 
as if shattering against the sky, was spilled in sparks. 
A roar like distant cheering rose from the shore. 

“How beautiful!” I exclaimed. 

“Too beautiful for words,” sighed Jerome. “It is 
the night, sir. At another time we would not notice 
a rocket, but to-night one rejoices at a trifle. Where 
are you from?” 

I told him. 

“Yes, this is a joyful night,” continued Jerome in 
the weak, sighing voice of one convalescing from an 
illness. “Heaven and earth are rejoicing, all creation 
is celebrating the holiday. Can you tell me, kind 


14 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


master, why it is that even in the presence of great 
happiness a man cannot forget his grief?” 

It seemed to me that this unexpected question was 
a challenge to one of those lengthy, soul-saving dis- 
cussions that idle and weary monks like so well. I 
did not feel in the mood for talking much, so I only 
asked: 

“What is your grief, brother?” 

“Just an ordinary one, like every one else’s, kind 
master; to-day a special sorrow has fallen on the 
monastery; our} Deacon Nicolasjdied at mass.” 

“‘God’s will be done!” said I, counterfeiting a monk- 
ish tone. “‘We must all die. I even think you should 
rejoice, for they say that whoever dies on Easter eve 
goes straight to heaven.” 

“That is true.” 

We stopped speaking. The figure of the peasant in 
the sheepskin hat faded into the line of the shore, the 
barrels of pitch blazed brighter and brighter. 

“And the Scriptures point clearly to the vanity of 
sorrow and regret,” Jerome broke silence. “Then, 
why does the heart sorrow and refuse to listen to 
reason? Why does one want to cry so bitterly?” 

Jerome shrugged his shoulders and, turning to me, 
began to speak rapidly: 

“Tf I had died, or any one else had died, it wouldn’t 
have mattered, we shouldn’t have been missed; but it 
was Nicolas who died—no one else but Nicolas! It 
is hard to believe that he is no longer on earth. As I 


THE NIGHT BEFORE EASTER 15 


stand here now on the ferry, it seems to me as if every 
moment I should hear his voice from the shore. He 
always came down to the river and called to me so 
that I should not feel lonely on the ferry. He used to 
leave his bed at night on purpose to do it. He was so 
good. Oh, dear, how good and kind he was! Even a 
mother is not to other men what Nicolas was to me. 
Have mercy on his soul, O Lord!” 

Jerome gave the cable a pull, but immediately turned 
to me again: 

“Your honour, how bright his mind was!” he said 
softly. “How sweet and musical his voice was! Just 
such a voice as they will sing of now at mass: ‘Oh, most 
kind, most comforting is Thy voice.’ And, above all 
other human qualities, he had one extraordinary gift.” 

“What gift?” I asked. 

The monk glanced at me and, as if assured that he 
could intrust me with a secret, said, laughing gaily: 

“He had the gift of writing akaphists!” * he said. 
“It was a miracle, sir, nothing less. You will be as- 
tonished when I tell you about it. Our father archi- 
mandrite comes from Moscow, our father vicar has 
studied in Kazan, we have wise monks and elders, and 
yet—what do you think?—not one of them can write! 
And Nicolas, a plain monk, a deacon, who never learnt 
anything and had nothing to show—he could write! 
It was a miracle, truly a miracle!” 


* Akaphist: a service of prayer to a special saint said or sung on 
that saint’s day. 


16 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


Jerome clasped his hands and, entirely forgetting the 
cable, continued with passion: 

“Our father vicar has the greatest trouble over his 
sermons. When he was writing the history of the 
monastery, he tired out the whole brotherhood and 
made ten trips to town; but Nicolas could write aka- 
phists, not just sermons and histories!” 

“And are akaphists so hard to write?” 

““Very hard,” nodded Jerome. “Wisdom and saint- 
liness will not help him to whom God has not given 
the gift. The monks who don’t understand argue 
that you need only know the life of the saint of whom 
you are writing and follow the other akaphists, but 
that is not so, sir. Of course, to write an akaphist one 
must know the life of the saint down to the least detail, 
and of course, too, one must conform to the other 
akaphists so far as knowing where to begin and what to 
write about. To give you an example, the first hymn 
must always begin with ‘It is forbidden’ or ‘It is 
elected,’ and the first ikos* must always begin with ‘An- 
gel.’ If you are interested in hearing it, in the akaphist 
to the Lord Jesus the first ikos begins like this: ‘Angels 
of the Creator, might of the Lord’; in the akaphist to 
the Holy Virgin it begins, ‘An angel was sent, a mes- 
senger from heaven’; in the akaphist to Nicolas the 
Wonder-worker it begins, ‘An angel in form, a being of 
earth ’—they all begin with ‘Angel.’ Of course, an aka- 
phist must conform to other akaphists, but the im- 

*Tkos. One of the short prayers included in an akaphist. 


THE NIGHT BEFORE EASTER 17 


portant thing is not the life of the saint nor its conform- 
ity, but its beauty, its sweetness. Everything about it 
must be graceful and brief and exact. Every line 
must be tender and gentle and soft; not a word must 
be harsh or unsuitable or rough. It must be written 
so that he who prays with his heart may weep with 
joy, that his soul may shudder and be afraid. In an 
akaphist to the Virgin he wrote: ‘Rejoice, exalted of 
men! Rejoice, beloved of the angels.’ In another 
part of the same akaphist he wrote: ‘Rejoice, holy- 
fruited tree that nourishest our faith; rejoice, tree of 
merciful leaves that coverest our sins’!” 

Jerome bowed his head and covered his face with his 
hands, as if he had taken fright or were ashamed of 
something. : 

“Holy-fruited tree—tree of merciful leaves!” he 
muttered. “‘Were there ever such words? How was 
it possible that the Lord should have given him such 
a gift? For brevity he used to combine many words 
and thoughts into one word, and how smoothly and 
truly his writing flowed! ‘Lambent Star of the world,’ 
he says in an akaphist to Jesus the all-merciful. 
‘Lambent Star of the world!’ Those words have never 
been spoken or written before; he thought of them 
himself; he found them in his own mind! But each 
line must not only be fluent and eloquent, it must be 
adorned with many things—with flowers and light and 
wind and sun and all the objects of the visible world. 
And every invocation must be written to fall softly 


18 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


and gratefully on the ear. ‘Rejoice in the land of the 
Kingdom of Paradise,’ he wrote in an akaphist to Ni- 
colas the Wonder-worker, not simply ‘Rejoice in Para- 
dise.’ It is smoother so and sweeter to the ear. And 
that is how Nicolas wrote; just like that. But I can’t 
tell you how well he wrote.” 

“Yes, in that case it is a pity he died,” I said; “‘but 
still, brother, let us go ahead, or we shall be late.” 

Jerome recollected himself and took hold of the 
cable. On the shore all the bells had begun to ring; 
the Procession of the Cross had probably started near 
the monastery, for now the dark space behind the bon- 
fires was strewn with moving lights. 

“Did Nicolas have his akaphists printed?” I asked 
Jerome. 

“How could he have them printed?” he sighed. 
“And then it would have been strange; why should 
he? No one in our monastery was interested in them; 
they didn’t care for them. They knew that Nicolas 
wrote but never gave it any thought. No one sets 
any value on modern writing these days.” 

“Are they prejudiced against it?” 

“Exactly. If Nicolas had been an elder, perhaps 
the brothers might have been interested, but he wasn’t 
even forty years old. Some laughed at him and even 
counted his writing a sin.” 

“Then, why did he write?” 

“Oh, chiefly for his own consolation. I was the 
only one of the brothers who read his akaphists. He 


THE NIGHT BEFORE EASTER 19 


used to throw his arms around me and smooth my hair 
and call me tender names, as if I were a little child. 
He used to open the door of his cell and make me sit 
by him, and we used to read——”’ 

Jerome left his cable and came toward me. 

“We were such friends,” he whispered with shining 
eyes. “Wherever he went, I went. When I was not 
with him he was sad; he loved me more than all the 
others, and all because his akaphists made me cry. 
It is sad to remember. Now I am like an orphan or a 
widower. The brothers in our monastery are good 
and kind and pious, you know, but not one of them is 
gentle and tender. They are all noisy, and talk 
loudly, and cough, and walk heavily, but Nicolas 
always spoke quietly and gently, and if he saw that 
any one was asleep or praying he would go by them as 
lightly as a fly or a gnat. His face was compassionate 
and tender——” 

Jerome sighed deeply and pulled the cable. We 
were already nearing the shore. Out of the silence 
and darkness of the river we slowly drifted into a 
magician’s land, smothered in choking smoke, uproari- 
ous with noise and light. Figures, seen clearly now, 
were moving among the fires; the light of the flames 
lent a strange, fantastic look to their red faces and forms. 
Here and there appeared the heads of horses, motion- 
less as if cast in red copper. 

“They will soon sing the Easter canon,” said Jerome. 
“But Nicolas is dead, so there will be no one to pene- 


20 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


trate its meaning. For him, no sweeter writing existed 
than this Easter canon. He used to listen to every 
word. You will be there, sir; listen to the singing.” 

“What, won’t you be in church?” 

“T can’t; I must run the ferry.” 

“But won’t they relieve you?”’ 

“T don’t know. I should have been relieved at nine 
o'clock, and, you see, I am still here. I must say, I 
should like to go to church.” 

“Are you a monk?” 

“Yes—that is, I am a lay brother.” 

The ferry-boat ran against the bank and stopped. 
I slipped five copecks for my fare into Jerome’s hand 
and jumped ashore. A wagon carrying a boy and a 
sleeping woman at once drove onto the ferry-boat. 
Jerome, faintly red in the firelight, bent to his rope and 
started the boat. 

The first few steps I took were in the mud; farther 
on I came to a soft, freshly trampled path. This led 
to the dark, cave-like monastery gates, through clouds 
of smoke and a confused multitude of men and women, 
unharnessed horses, carts, and wagons. All chattered 
and snorted and laughed, gleaming in the crimson 
light through eddying shadows of smoke—chaos in- 
deed! And amidst all this jostling there was found 
room to load a little cannon and sell gingerbread! 

Not less activity but more order and decorum pre- 
vailed in the enclosure inside the walls. Here the air 
smelt of juniper and incense, The crowd talked loudly, 


THE NIGHT BEFORE EASTER 21 


but there was no laughing or neighing of horses. Peo- 
ple carrying loaves and bundles stood huddled together 
among the crosses and tombstones; it was evident 
that many of them had come a long way to have their 
loaves blessed, and were tired. The strip of iron pave- 
ment that led from the gates to the church door rang 
loudly under the boots of the young lay brethren 
running busily along it; in the bell-tower there was 
hurrying and calling. 

“What a busy night this is!” I thought. “How 
good it is!” 

Everything in nature seemed to reflect this activity, 
from the dark shadows to the iron pavement, the tomb- 
stones, and the trees under which the crowd was 
stirring. A turbulent contest was going on at the door 
between the ebbing and flowing throngs. Some were 
hurrying in, others were coming out, to return, stand 
for a moment, and again move on. They went from 
place to place, roaming about as if in search of some- 
thing; waves started from the door and swept along 
the church, even stirring the frent rows, where the 
more serious and solid folk were standing. Of regu- 
larly conducted prayer there could be no thought; 
there was no praying at all, only a kind of whole- 
hearted, irresponsible, childish joy, seeking a pretext to 
break out and discharge itself in movement of any kind, 
even in disorderly pushing and crowding. 

The same unusual activity struck one in the Easter. 
service. The sanctuary gates of all the chapels were 


22 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


thrown wide open; dense clouds of incense floated 
around the lustres; everywhere were lights, brilliance, 
and the glitter of tapers. All reading was out of the 
question, and the singing went gaily and busily on 
without interruption. After every canon the priests 
changed their vestments and went out to scatter in- 
cense, and this took place nearly every ten minutes. 

I had hardly succeeded in securing a place before a 
wave swept down from the front of the church and 
threw me back. Before me passed a tall, stout deacon, 
holding a long red taper, and behind him, carrying the 
incense, hurried a grey-haired archimandrite wearing 
a golden mitre. As they disappeared from sight the 
crowd pushed me back to my former place. But 
scarcely had ten minutes elapsed before another wave 
swept up and again the deacon appeared. This time 
he was followed by the father vicar, the same who, 
according to Jerome, had written the history of the 
monastery. 

As I mixed with the crowd and caught the pervad- 
ing, joyous excitement my heart ached unbearably for 
Jerome. Why did they not relieve him? Why should 
not some one less impressionable, with less feeling than 
he, go to the ferry? 

“Lift up thine eyes, O Zion, and behold,” sang the 
choir. “Thy Son, the Light of God, has come.” 

I glanced at the faces around me. All wore a bright 
look of exaltation, but not a man “penetrated the 
meaning” of the singing, and no one “caught his 


THE NIGHT BEFORE EASTER 23 


breath” to hear. Why did they not relieve Jerome? 
In my imagination I could see him so clearly, standing 
quietly against the wall, bending forward, eagerly 
grasping the beauty of the sacred words. All that lay 
beyond the hearing of the people standing near me 
he would have drunk greedily with his quick ear, he 
would have grown drunk with rapture until he caught 
his breath, and in the whole church there would have 
been no happier man than he. Now he was rowing 
back and forth on the dark river, sorrowing for his 
dead brother and friend. A wave rolled up from be- 
hind, and a fat, smiling monk, looking back and finger- 
ing a rosary, came slipping sideways by me, forcing a 
passage for a lady in a hat and velvet cloak. Behind 
the lady hurried a servant of the monastery, holding a 
chair above our heads. 

I left the church, wishing to see the dead Nicolas, 
unknown writer of akaphists. I passed through the 
enclosure where a row of monks’ cells lay along the 
walls and looked into several windows but, seeing noth- 
ing, turned back. I do not regret now not having 
seen Nicolas. Who knows if in doing so I might not 
have dimmed the picture of him which my fancy now 
paints? I see him clearly, that lovable and poetical 
being who went out at night to call to Jerome, and, 
lonely and uncomprehended, strewed his akaphists with 
stars and rays of sunlight. He is shy and pale, with 
a gentle, pensive face, and in his eyes, beside intel- 
ligence, I see shining the tenderness and hardly 


o4 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


repressed, childlike rapture which I had noticed in 
Jerome’s voice when he recited to me quotations from 
the akaphists. 

When we left the church after mass it was already 
light. Morning was here. The stars had faded and 
the sky looked blue-grey and dull; the iron pavement, 
the tombstones, and the buds on the trees were wet 
with dew; the air was piercing and damp. Outside 
the enclosure there was no activity such as I had seen 
the night before. Horses and men looked tired and 
sleepy; they scarcely stirred, and a few heaps of black 
ashes were all that remained of the barrels of pitch. 
When a man is tired and drowsy he thinks that nature, 
too, isin the same condition. The trees and the young 
grass seemed to me to be asleep, and even the bells 
seemed to ring less loudly and merrily than they had 
the night before. The bustle was over, and all that 
remained after the excitement was a pleasant lassitude 
and a desire for sleep and warmth. 

I could now see the river from shore to shore. A 
light mist was drifting in little clouds across its sur- 
face, and a chilly dampness breathed from the water. 
When I jumped onto the ferry a wagon and about 
twenty men and women were already on it. The 
damp and, as it seemed to me, drowsy cable stretched 
across the broad river and was lost in places in the 
white mist. 

“Christ is risen! Is there no one else?” asked a 
gentle voice. 


THE NIGHT BEFORE EASTER 25 
I recognised it as Jerome’s. The darkness no longer 


hid the monk from view, and I saw a tall, narrow- 
shouldered man of thirty-five, with large, rounded 
features, half-closed, drowsy eyes, and a rough, wedge- 
shaped beard. He looked extraordinarily sad and 
tired. 

“Haven’t they relieved you yet?” I asked with 
surprise. 

“Me?” he asked, smiling and turning his chilled, 
dew-drenched face to me. “There won’t be any one 
to take my place till morning. Everybody has gone 
to the archimandrite now to break the Lenten fast.” 

He pulled the cable, helped by a little peasant in a 
red fur hat that looked like the tubs honey is sold in; 
they grunted amicably and the ferry moved off. 

We floated across the river, troubling on our passage 
the slowly rising mist. Noonespoke. Jerome worked 
silently with one hand. For a long time he rested his 
dim, timid eyes on us all, and then at last fixed his 
gaze on the rosy face of a young merchant’s wife stand- 
ing beside me, shrinking in silence from the mist that 
enveloped her. He did not take his eyes off her face 
as long as the journey lasted. 

There was little of the man in that long gaze; and it 
seemed to me as if Jerome were seeking in the woman’s 
face the sweet and gentle features of his lost friend. 


/ yy, , ey ae . 
; y oh | _ = we aren se y oh IF of 


(NM 


AT HOME 


“CNOMEBODY came from the Grigorieffs’ to fetch 

a book, but I said you were not at home. The 
postman has brought the newspapers and two letters. 
And, by the way, sir, I wish you would give your at- 
tention to Seriozha. | I saw him smoking to-day and 
also day before yesterday. When I told him how 
wrong it was he put his fingers in his ears, as he always 
does, and began to sing loudly so as to drown my 
voice.” “ 

- Bikofski,| an attorney of the circuit court, 
who had just come home from a session and was taking 
off his gloves in his study, looked at the governess 
who was making this statement and laughed. 

“So Seriozha has been smoking!” he said with a 
shrug of his shoulders. “‘Fancy the little beggar with 
a cigarette in his mouth! How old is he?” 

“Seven years old. It seems of small consequence 
to you, but at his age smoking is a bad, a harmful 
habit; and bad habits should be nipped in the bud.” 

“You are absolutely right. Where does he get the 
tobacco?” 

“From your table.” 


“He does? In that case, send him to me.” 
26 


AT HOME 27 


When the governess had gone, Bikofski sat down in 
an easy chair before his writing-table and began to 
think. For some reason he pictured to himself his 
Seriozha enveloped in clouds of tobacco smoke, with a 
huge, yard-long cigarette in his mouth, and this carica- 
ture made him smile. At the same time the earnest, 
anxious face of the governess awakened in him mem- 
ories of days long past and half forgotten, when smok- 
ing at school and in the nursery aroused in masters 
and parents a strange, almost incomprehensible hor- 
ror. It really was horror. Children were unmercifully 
flogged, and expelled from school, and their lives were 
blighted, although not one of the teachers nor fathers 
knew exactly what constituted the harm and offence 
of smoking. Even very intelligent people did not 
hesitate to combat the vice they did not understand. 
Bikofski called to mind the principal of his school, a 
highly educated, good-natured old man, who was so 
shocked when he caught a scholar with a cigarette that 
he would turn pale and immediately summon a special 
meeting of the school board and sentence the offender 
to expulsion. No doubt that is one of the laws of 
society—the less an evil is understood the more bit- 
terly and harshly is it attacked. 

The attorney thought of the two or three boys who 
had been expelled and of their subsequent lives, and 
could not but reflect that punishment is, in many cases, 
more productive of evil than crime itself. The living 
organism possesses the faculty of quickly adapting 


ot 


28 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


itself to every condition; if it were not so man would 
be conscious every moment of the unreasonable foun- 
dations on which his reasonable actions rest and of 
how little of justice and assurance are to be found even 
in those activities which are fraught with so much re- 
sponsibility and which are so appalling in their conse- 
quences, such as education, literature, the law 

And thoughts such as these came floating into 
Bikofski’s head; light, evanescent thoughts such as 
only enter weary, resting brains. One knows not 
whence they are nor why they come; they stay but a 
short while and seem to spread across the surface of 
the brain without ever sinking very far into its depths. 
For those whose minds for hours and days together 
are forced to be occupied with business and to travel 
always along the same lines, these homelike, untram- 
melled musings bring a sort of comfort and a pleasant 
restfulness of their own. 

It was nine o'clock. On the floor overhead some 
one was pacing up and down, and still higher up, on 
the third story, four hands were playing scales on the 
piano. The person who was pacing the floor seemed, 
from his nervous strides, to be the victim of tormenting 
thoughts or of the toothache; his footsteps and. the 
monotonous scales added to the quiet of the evening 
something somnolent that predisposed the mind to idle 
reveries. 

In the nursery, two rooms away, Seriozha and his 
governess were talking. | 


AT HOME 29 


“Pa-pa has come!” sang the boy. “Papa has co- 
ome! Pa! Pa! Pa!” 

- “Votre pére vous appelle, allez vite!” cried the gov- 
erness, twittering like a frightened bird. 

“What shall I say to him?” thought Bikofski. 

But before he had had time to think of anything 
to say his son Seriozha had already entered the study. 
This was a little person whose sex could only be divined 
from his clothes—he was so delicate, and fair, and frail. 
His body was as languid as a hot-house plant and every- 
thing about him looked wonderfully dainty and soft— 
his movements, his curly hair, his glance, his velvet 
tunic. 

“Good evening, papa,” he said in a gentle voice, 
climbing onto his father’s knee and swiftly kissing his 
neck. “Did you send for me?” 

“Wait a bit, wait a bit, master,” answered the 
lawyer, putting him aside. “Before you and I kiss 
each other we must have a talk, a serious talk. I am 
angry with you, and I don’t love you any more; do 
you understand that, young man? I don’t love you, 
and you are no son of mine.” 

Seriozha looked steadfastly at his father and then 
turned his regard to the table and shrugged his 
shoulders. . 

“What have I done?” he asked, perplexed, and 
blinked. “I didn’t go into your study once to-day, 
and I haven’t touched a thing.” 

“Miss Natalie has just been complaining to me that 


30 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


you have been smoking; is that so? Have you been 
smoking?” 

“Yes, I smoked once. That is so.” 

“There! So now you have told a lie into the bar- 
gain!”’ said the lawyer, disguising his smile by a frown. 
“Miss Natalie saw you smoking twice. That means 
that you have been caught doing three naughty things: 
smoking, taking tobacco that doesn’t belong to you 
off my table, and telling a lie. Three accusations!” 

“Oh, ye-es!” Seriozha remembered, and his eyes 
smiled. “That is true, true! I did smoke twice— 
to-day and one other time.” 

“There, you see, so it was twice and not once. I 
am very, very displeased with you. You used to be a 
good boy, but now I see you have grown bad and 
naughty.” 

Bikofski straightened Seriozha’s little collar and 
thought: 

“What shall I say to him next?” 

“Yes, it was very wrong,” he went on. “I did not 
expect this of you. For one thing, you have no right 
to take tobacco that doesn’t belong to you. People 
only have a right to use their own things; if a man takes 
other people’s things he—he is bad. [That isn’t what 
I ought to say to him,” thought Bikofski.| For in- 
stance, Miss Natalie has a trunk with dresses in it. 
That trunk belongs to her, and we—that is, you and 
I—must not dare to touch it, because it isn’t ours. 
You have your little horses and your pictures. I don’t 


AT HOME 31 


take them, do I? Perhaps I should like to, but they 
are not mine they are yours.” 

“You can take them if you want to,” said Se- 
riozha, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t mind, papa, you 
may have them. The little yellow dog that is on your 
table is mine, but I don’t care if it stays there.” 

“You don’t understand me,” said Bikofski. “You 
made me a present of that little dog; it belongs to me 
now, and I can do what I like with it; but I didn’t 
give you the tobacco, the tobacco belongs to me. [“I’m 
not explaining it to him right,” thought the lawyer, 
“not right at all.”|] If I want to smoke tobacco that 
isn’t mine I must first get permission to do so——” 

And so, slowly coupling sentence to sentence, and 
counterfeiting the speech of a child, Bikofski went on 
to explain to his son the meaning of possession. Se- 
riozha’s eyes rested on his father’s chest, and he lis- 
tened attentively (he liked to converse with his father 
in the evening); then he rested his elbows on the edge 
of the table and, half closing his near-sighted eyes, 
began contemplating the paper and the inkstand. 
His glance roamed across the table and was arrested 
by a bottle of glue. 

“Papa, what is glue made of?” he suddenly asked, 
raising the bottle to his eyes. 

Bikofski took the bottle away from him, put it 
where it belonged, and continued: 

“In the next place, you have been smoking. That 
is very naughty indeed. If I smoke, it does not mean 


32 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


that smoking is good. When I smoke I know it is a 
stupid thing to do, and I am angry with myself and 
blame myself for doing it. [‘‘Oh, what a wily teacher 
I am!” thought the lawyer.] Tobacco is very bad for 
the health, and men who smoke die sooner than they 
should. It is especially bad to smoke when one is as 
little as you are. Your chest is weak, you have not 
grown strong yet, and tobacco smoke gives weak peo- 
ple consumption and other diseases. Your Uncle Ig- 
natius died of consumption; if he hadn’t smoked he 
might have been living to-day.” 

Seriozha looked thoughtfully at the lamp, touched 
the shade with his finger, and sighed. 

“Uncle Ignatius used to play the violin,” he said. 

=  Grigorieffs have his violin now.” 


Rg eet a : 


e;Seriozha again leaned his elbows on the edge of the 
table et became lost in thought. From the expres- 
‘sion fixed on his pale features he seemed to be listening 
to something, or to be intent on the unfolding of his 
own ideas; sadness and something akin to fear ap- 
peared in his great, unblinking eyes; he was probably 
thinking of death, which such a little while ago had 
taken away his mother and his Uncle Ignatius. Death 
carries mothers and uncles away to another world, and 
their children and violins stay behind on earth. Dead 
people live in heaven, somewhere near the stars, and 
from there they look down upon the earth. Can they 
bear the separation? 
“What shall I say to him?” thought Bikofski. ‘“‘He 


AT HOME 33 


»? 
isn’t listening. It is obvious that he doesn’t attach 
any importance to his offence or to my arguments. 
What can I say to touch him?” 

The lawyer rose and walked about the study. 

“In my day these questions were settled with sin- 
gular simplicity,” he reflected. “If a youngster was 
caught smoking he was thrashed. This would, indeed, 
make a poor-spirited, cowardly boy give up smoking, 
but a clever and plucky one would carry his tobacco in 
his boot after the whipping and smoke in an outhouse. 
When he was caught in the outhouse and whipped 
again he would go down and smoke by the river, and 
so on until the lad was grown up. My mother used 
to give me money and candy to keep me from smoking. 
These expedients now seem to us weak and immoral. 
Taking up a logical standpoint, the educator of :to-, 


day tries to instil the first principles of right into a ~ 


child by helping him to understand them and not by 
rousing his fear or his desire to distinguish himself and 
obtain a reward.” 

While he was walking and meditating Seriozha had 
climbed up and was standing with his feet on a chair 
by the side of the table and had begun to draw pic- 
tures. A pile of paper cut especially for him and a 
blue pencil lay on the table so that he should not 
scribble on any business papers or touch the ink. 

“Cook cut her finger to-day while she was chopping 
cabbage,” he said, moving his eyebrows and drawing a 
house. “She screamed so that we were all frightened 


a 
Des i. 


34 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


and ran into the kitchen. She was so silly! Miss 
Natalie told her to dip her finger in cold water, but 
she would only suck it. How could she put her dirty 
finger in her mouth! Papa, that wasn’t nice, was 
Ta 

Then he went on to narrate how an organ-grinder 
had come into the yard during dinner, with a little girl 
who had sung and danced to the music. 

“He has his own field of thought,” the lawyer re- 
flected. ‘“‘He has a little world of his own in his head, 
and knows what, according to him, is important and 
what is not. One cannot cheat him of his attention 
and consciousness by simply aping his language, one 
must also be able to think in his fashion. He would 
have understood me perfectly had I really regretted 
the tobacco, and been offended and burst into tears. 
That is why nothing can replace the mother in educa- 
tion, because she is able to feel and weep and laugh 
with her children. Nothing can be accomplished by 
logic and ethics. Well, what shall I say to him? 
What?” 

And it seemed to Bikofski laughable and strange 
that an experienced student of justice like himself, who 
had spent half a lifetime in the study of every phase of 
the prevention and punishment of crime, should find 
himself completely at sea and unable to think of what 
to say to a boy. 

“Listen! Give me your word of honour that you 
won't smoke again,” he said. 


AT HOME 35 
““Wo-ord of honour!” sang Seriozha. “Wo-ord of 


ho-nour! nour! nour!” 

“*T wonder if he knows what word of honour means?” 
Bikofski asked himself. “‘No, ’m a bad teacher. If 
one of our educationalists or jurists could look into 
my head at this moment he would call me a muddle- 
head and very likely accuse me of too much subtlety. 
But the fact is, all these confounded questions are 
settled so much more easily at school or in court than 
at home. Here, at home, one has to do with people 
whom one unreasoningly loves, and love is exacting 
and complicates things. If this child were my pupil 
or a prisoner at the bar, instead of being my son, I 
would not be such a coward and my thoughts would 
not wander as they now do.” 

Bikofski sat down at the table and drew toward him 
one of Seriozha’s drawings. The picture represented 
a crooked-roofed little house with smoke coming in 
zigzags, like lightning, out of the chimneys and rising 
to the edge of the paper. Near the house stood a 
soldier with dots for eyes and a bayonet that resembled 
the figure 4. 

“A man cannot possibly be higher than a house,” 
said the lawyer. “See here, your roof only reaches up 
to the soldier’s shoulders.” 

Seriozha climbed onto his father’s lap and wriggled 
there a long time trying to get himself comfortably 
settled. 

“No, papa,” he said, contemplating his drawing. 


36 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 
“If you made the soldier little, his eyes wouldn’t 


show.” 

What need was there to have corrected him? From 
daily observation of his son the lawyer had become 
convinced that children, like savages, have their own 
artistic view-point and their own odd requirements, 
which are beyond the scope of an adult intelligence. 
Under close observation, Seriozha might appear ab- 
normal to an adult because he found it possible and 
reasonable to draw a man higher than a house, giving 
his pencil his own perceptions as well as a subject. 
Thus, the sounds of an orchestra he represented by 
round, smoky spots; a whistle, by a twisted thread; 
in his mind, sound was intimately connected with form 
and colour, so that in painting letters he invariably 
coloured the sound L, yellow; M, red; A, black; and 
so forth. 

Throwing aside the drawing, Seriozha wriggled again, 
took a convenient position, and turned his attention 
to his father’s beard. First he smoothed it carefully 
and then combed it apart in the form of side whiskers. 

“Now you look like Ivan Stepanovitch,” he mur- 
mured, “and now in a minute you're going to look like 
—our porter. Papa, why do porters stand at doors? 
To keep robbers from coming in?” 

The lawyer felt the child’s breath on his face, the soft 
hair brushed his cheek, and warmth and tenderness 
crept into his heart as if his whole soul, and not his 
hands alone, were lying on the velvet of Seriozha’s tunic, 


AT HOME $7 


He looked into the boy’s large, dark eyes and seemed 
to see mother and wife and everything he had once 
loved gazing out of those wide pupils. 

“How could one whip him?” he thought. “How 
could one bewilder him by punishment? No, we 
shouldn’t pretend to know how to educate children. 
People used to be simpler; they thought less and so 
decided their problems more boldly; but we think too 
much; we are eaten up by logic. The more enlight- 
ened a man is the more he is given to reflection and 
hair-splitting; the more undecided he is, the more full 
of scruples, and the more timidly he approaches a task. 
And, seriously considered, how much bravery, how 
much self-reliance must a man not have to undertake 
teaching, or judging, or writing a big book!” 

The clock struck ten. 

“Come, boy, time for bed!” said the lawyer. “Say 
good night and then go.” 

“No, papa,” pouted Seriozha. “I want to stay a 
little longer. Tell me something; tell me a story.” 

“Very well; but as soon as the story is told—off we 
go!” 

On his free evenings the lawyer was in the habit of 
telling Seriozha stories. Like most busy people, he 
did not know one piece of poetry by heart, neither could 
he remember a single story, so he was forced to im- 
provise something new every time. He generally took 
for his key-note “Once upon a time,” and then went 
on heaping one bit of innocent nonsense on another, 


38 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


not knowing, as he told the beginning, what the middle 
or the end would be. The scenes, the characters, and 
the situations he would seize at random, and the plot 
and the moral would trickle in of their own accord, 
independent of the will of the story-teller. Seriozha 
loved these improvisations, and the lawyer noticed 
that the more modest and uncomplicated the plot 
turned out to be the more deeply it affected the boy. 

“Listen,” he began, raising his eyes to the ceiling. 
“Once upon a time there lived an old, a very old king 
who had a long, grey beard and—and—whiskers as 
long as this. Well, this king lived in a palace of crystal 
that sparkled and flashed in the sunlight like a great 
big block of pure ice. The palace, little son, stood in a 
great big garden, and in this garden, you know, there 
grew oranges and bergamot pears and wild cherry- 
trees; and tulips and roses and lilies-of-the-valley blos- 
somed there and bright-coloured birds sang. Yes, and 
on the trees there hung little crystal bells that rang 
so sweetly when the wind blew that one never grew 
tired of listening to them. Crystal gives out a softer, 
sweeter tone than metal. Well, and what do you 
think? In that garden there were fountains. Don’t 
you remember—you saw a fountain once at Aunt 
Sonia’s summer house? Well, there were fountains just 
like that in the king’s garden, only they were ever so 
much larger and their spray reached right up to the 
tip of the highest poplar-trees 4 

Bikofski reflected an instant and continued: 


AT HOME $9" 


“The old king had only one son, who was heir to 
the kingdom, a little boy, just as little as you are. He 
was a good boy; he was never capricious, and he went +> 
to bed early, and never touched anything on his fa- 
ther’s table—and—and was as nice as he could be in 
every way. He had only one failing—he smoked.” 
Seriozha was listening intently, looking steadily into 
his father’s eyes. The lawyer thought to himself: 
““How shall I go on?” He ruminated for a long time 
and then ended thus: 
“Because he smoked, the king’s son fell ill of con- 
sumption and died when he was twenty years old. 
The old man, decrepit and ill, was left without any one 
to take care of him, and there was no one to govern the 
kingdom or to protect the palace. Foes came and kiiled 
the old man and destroyed the palace, and now there 
are no wild cherry-trees left in the garden, and no 
birds and no bells, and so, sonny——”’ i 
An ending like this seemed to Bikofski artless and "“e««<y 
absurd, but the whole tale had made a deep impres- ° | 
sion on Seriozha. Once more sadness and something 6 vev mu: 
resembling terror crept into his eyes; he gazed for a@ \e«;s«,, 
minute at the dark window and said in a low voice: =. 
“TI won’t smoke any more——”’ >ret 
When he had said good night and gone to bed, his 
father walked softly back and forth across the floor 
and smiled. 
“Tt will be said that beauty and artistic form were 
the influences in this case,” he mused. “‘That may be 


40 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


so, but it is no consolation. After all, those are not 
genuine means of influence. Why is it that morals 
and truth must not be presented in their raw state but 
always in a mixture, sugar-coated and gilded, like pills? 
It is not right. That sort of thing is falsification, trick- 
ery, decei fi 

He remembered the jurymen who invariably had to 
be harangued in an “address”; the public who could 
only assimilate history by means of legends and his- 
torical novels and poems. 

“Medicine must be sweet, truth must be beautiful; 
this has been man’s folly since the days of Adam. Be- 
sides, it may all be quite natural, and perhaps it is as 
it should be. Nature herself has many tricks of ex- 
pediency and many deceptions——” 

He sat down to his work, but the idle, homelike 
thoughts long continued to flit through his brain. 
The scales could no longer be heard overhead, but the 
dweller on the second floor still continued to walk 
back and forth. 


CHAMPAGNE 


N the year in which my story begins I was work- 
ing as station-master at a little flag-station on one 

of our southwestern railways. Whether my life there 
was gay or tedious you can decide for yourself when I 
tell you that there was not one human habitation within 
twenty miles of the place, not one woman, not one re- 
spectable dram-shop, and I was young and strong at 
that time, ardent and hot-headed and foolish. My 
only distractions were seeing the windows of the pas- 
senger-trains and drinking foul vodka, which the Jews 
adulterated with thorn-apple. It happened, sometimes, 
that a woman’s head would flash by at a car-window, 
and then I would stand as still as a statue, holding my 
breath, staring after the train until it changed into 
an almost imperceptible dot. Or sometimes I would 
drink myself tight on the sickening vodka and remain 
unconscious of the flight of the long hours and days. 
On me, a son of the North, the steppes had the same 
effect as the sight of a neglected Tartar cemetery. In 
summer the solemn peace, the monotonous, strident 
chirping of the grasshoppers, the clear moonlight nights 
from which there was no concealment wrought in me 
a mournful sadness; in winter the immaculate whiteness 


of the plains, their cold remoteness, the long nights, 
41 ’ 


42 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


and the howling of the wolves oppressed me like a 
painful nightmare. 

There were several of us living at the little station— 
my wife and I, a deaf and scrofulous telegraph-operator, 
and three watchmen. My assistant, a consumptive 
young man, went often to the city for treatment, and 
there he would stay for months at a time, leaving me 
his duties as well as the right to his salary. I had no 
children, and nothing on earth could tempt a guest to 
stay with us. I myself could never visit any one ex- 
cept my fellow employees along the line, and this I 
could only do once every month. On the whole, it 
was a very tedious existence. 

I remember, my wife and I were waiting to see the 
New Year in. We sat at the table munching lazily, 
listening to the deaf telegraph-operator as he monoto- 
nously hammered his instrument in an adjoining room. 

I had already had five glasses of vodka with thorn- 
apple and sat with my heavy head in my hands, 
thinking about this unconquerable, this inevitable 
tedium. My wife sat beside me with her eyes fixed on 
my face. She was gazing at me as only a woman 
gazes for whom nothing exists on earth but her good- 
looking husband. She loved me madly, servilely; she 
loved not only my good looks but my sins and my 
wickedness and my sadness, and even the cruelty with 
which I tormented her, heaping reproaches on her in 
my drunken wanderings, not knowing on whom to vent 
my spleen. 


CHAMPAGNE 43 


Notwithstanding that this melancholy was eating 
into my soul, we were preparing to welcome the New 
Year with unwonted solemnity and were waiting with 
considerable impatience for midnight. 

The fact was, we had saved up two bottles of cham- 
pagne, champagne of the real sort, with the label 
_ “Veuve Clicquot” on the bottle. I had won this 
treasure that autumn in a bet at a christening party. 
It sometimes happens that during an arithmetic lesson, 
when the very atmosphere seems heavy with tedium, a 
butterfly will flutter into the classroom from out-of- 
doors. Then the urchins will all crane their necks and 
follow its flight with curiosity, as if they saw before 
them something strange and new and not simply a 
butterfly. We were amused in just such a way by this 
ordinary champagne which had dropped by chance 
into the midst of our dull life at the station. We said 
not a word and kept looking first at the clock and then 
at the bottles. 

When the hands pointed to five minutes to twelve I 
slowly began to uncork one of the bottles. Whether 
I was weak from the effects of the vodka or whether 
the bottle was moist, I know not; I only remember 
that when the cork flew up to the ceiling with a pop 
the bottle slipped from my hands and fell to the floor. 
Not more than half a glassful of wine was spilled, for 
I was able to catch the bottle and to stop its fizzing 
mouth with my finger. 

“Well, a happy New Year!” I cried, pouring out 
two glasses. “Drink!” 


604 


997) 


44 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


My wife took the glass and stared at me with startled 
eyes. Her face had grown pale and was stamped with 
horror. 

“Did you drop the bottle?” she asked. 

“Yes; what of it?” 

“That is bad,” she said, setting down her glass. 
“It is a bad omen. It means that some disaster will 
befall us this year.” 

“What a peasant you are!” I sighed. “You are an 
intelligent woman, but you rave like an old nurse. 
Drink!” 

“God grant I may be raving, but—something will 
surely happen. You'll see.” 

She did not finish her glass but went off to one 
side and lost herself in thought. I made a few time- 
honoured remarks on the subject of superstition, drank 
half the bottle, walked back and forth across the room, 
and went out. 

The silent, frosty night reigned outside in all its 
cold and lonely beauty. The moon and two downy 
white clouds hung motionless in the zenith over the 
station, as if they were glued to the sky and were 
waiting for something. They shed a faint, diaphanous 
light that touched the white earth tenderly, as if fear- 
ing to offend its modesty, and lit up everything—the 
snow-drifts and the embankment. The air was very 
still. 

I walked along the embankment. 

**A silly woman!” I thought, looking at the heavens, 


which were strewn with brilliant stars. ‘“‘Even if one 
\ 


CHAMPAGNE 45 


admits that omens sometimes come true, what disaster 
could befall us? The misfortunes which we have en- 
countered and which are now upon us are so great that 
it would be difficult to imagine anything worse. What 
further harm can be done to a fish after it has been 
’ caught, roasted, and served up with sauce at table?” 

A poplar covered with snow looked, in the bluish 
mist, like a giant in a winding-sheet. It gazed aus- 
terely and sadly at me, as if, like myself, it knew its 
own loneliness. I looked at it a long time. 

“My youth has been cast aside like a useless cigar 
stump,” I pursued the thread of my thoughts. “My 
parents died when I was a child; I was taken away 
from school. I am gently bred, and yet I have had no 
better education than a labourer. I have no home, no 
kindred, no friends, no favourite occupation. I am not 
capable of anything, and at the height of my powers 
I am only fit to fill the position of station-master. Be- 
sides being a failure, Iam poor and have been poor all 
my life. What further misfortune could befall me?” 

A ruddy light appeared in the distance. A train was 
coming toward me. The awakening plains heard the 
noise of it. My meditations had been so bitter that 
it seemed to me as if I had been thinking aloud and 
that the moan of the telegraph wires and the roar of the 
train were the voice of my thoughts. 

“What further misfortune could befall me? The 
loss of my wife?” I asked myself. “Even that would 
not be terrible. I cannot conceal it from myself: I 
do not love her! I married her when I was still a boy. 


46 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


Now I am young and strong, and she has grown thin 
and old and stupid and is crammed with superstitions 
from her head to her heels. What is there beautiful 
in her mawkish love, her sunken chest, her faded eyes? 
I endure her, but I do not love her. What could 
happen? My youth will go, as they say, for a pinch 
of snuff. Women only flash by me in the car-windows 
like shooting stars. I have no love now and have 
never known it. My manhood, my courage, all will 
be lost. All will be thrown away like so much litter, 
and what riches I have are not worth one copper 
farthing here on these plains.” 

The train flew noisily by me, and its lights shone on 
- me unconcernedly out of the ruddy windows. I saw 
it halt near the green station lamps; it stopped there 
for a minute and then rolled on. After I had walked 
for two miles I turned homeward. My sad thoughts 
still pursued me. Bitter as my mood was, I remember 
I seemed to try to make myself gloomier and sadder. 
Shallow, self-centred people, you know, have moments 
when the consciousness that they are unhappy gives 
them a certain pleasure, and they will even coquet 
with their own sufferings. There was much that was 
just in my reflections and also much that was con- 
ceited and foolish, and there was something childish 
in the challenge: “What further misfortune could be- 
fall me?” 

“Yes, what could befall me?” I asked myself as I 
walked homeward. “It seems to me that I have lived 


CHAMPAGNE 47 


through everything. I have been ill. I have lost my 
money. I am reprimanded every day by the adminis- 
tration of the railway. I am starving, and a mad wolf 
has run into the station yard. What else could hap- 
pen? I have been degraded and wronged, and I, too, 
have wronged others. There is only one thing that 
I have not done. I have never committed a crime, 
and I believe I am incapable of it; I am afraid of the 
law.” 

The two clouds had quitted the moon and were 
sailing at a distance with an air of whispering together 
about something which the moon must not hear. A 
light breeze skimmed across the plains, carrying the 
faint sound of the departing train. 

My wife met me at the threshold of our house. Her 
eyes were smiling merrily, and delight shone from her 
whole face. 

“IT have news!” she whispered. “Go quickly to 
your room and put on your new coat; we have a 
guest!” 

“What guest?” 

“My aunt Natalia Petrovna has just come in on the 
train.” 

“Which Natalia Petrovna?” 

“My uncle Simeon’s wife. You don’t know her. 
She is very kind and very pretty.” 

I must have frowned, for my wife’s face grew sud- 
denly serious, and she whispered quickly: 

“Of course, it is strange that she should have come, 


48 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


but don’t be angry, Nicolas; make allowances for her. 
You see, she is unfortunate. My uncle is really a 
tyrant and very bad-tempered, and it is hard to live 
in peace with him. She says she is only going to stay 
with us three days, until she hears from her brother.” 

My wife whispered a lot more nonsense about her 
tyrannical uncle, about the weakness of human beings 
in general and of young women in particular, about its 
being our duty to shelter every one, even sinners, and 
soon. Without comprehending a thing, I donned my 
new coat and went to make the acquaintance of my 
“aunt.” 

A little woman with large black eyes was sitting at 
the table. Our board, the grey walls, the rough otto- 
man, everything down to the least grain of dust seemed 
to have become younger and gayer in the presence of 
this fresh young being, exhaling some strange perfume, 
beautiful and depraved. That our guest was depraved 
I knew from her smile, from her perfume, from the 
particular way she had of glancing and of using her 
eyelashes, and from the tone in which she addressed 
my wife, a respectable woman. There was no need 
for her to tell me that she had run away from her 
husband, that he was old and tyrannical, that she was 
merry and kind. I understood everything at her first 
glance; there are few men in Europe who cannot 
recognise a woman of a certain temperament on sight. 

“T did not know I had such a big nephew,” said my 
aunt, holding out her hand to me. 


CHAMPAGNE 49 


“And I didn’t know I had such a pretty aunt,” 
said I. 

We recommenced our supper. The cork flew with a 
pop from the second bottle of champagne, and my aunt 
drank half a glass at a draught. When my wife left 
the room for a moment she was under no restraint 
and finished the rest of it. The wine and the presence 
of the woman went to my head. Do you remember 
the words of the song: 

**Eyes passionate and darkling, 
Eyes beautiful and sparkling, 
Oh, but I love you! 

Oh, but I fear you!” 


I do not remember what happened next. If any one 
wants to know how love begins let him read romances 
and novels; I shall only say a little, and that in the 
words of the same foolish song: 


**When I first saw you, 
Evil was the hour—” 


Everything went head over heels to the devil. I 
remember a terrible, mad hurricane that whirled me 
away like a leaf. For a long time it whirled me, and 
wiped off the earth my wife and my aunt and my 
strength. From a little station on the plains it cast 
me, as you see, onto this dark street. 

Now tell me, what further misfortune could befall 
me? 


oi 


THE MALEFACTOR 


TINY, very thin little peasant stood before the 
examining magistrate. He wore a striped: shirt 
andxpatched@trousers; his shaggy beard, his pock- 
marked face, his eyes scarcely visible under their 
bushy, overhanging brows gave him a harsh and for- 
bidding expression, to which a mane of matted,-un-* 
__kempt hair added a spider-like ferocity. He-was:bare- 
foots 
“Denis Grigorieff,’ began the magistrate, “come 
nearer and answer my questions. While patrolling 
the track on the seventh of last July, Ivan Akinfoff, the 
railroad watchman, found you at:thesone-hundred-and 
-~- forty“firstverst-unscrewing one of the nuts that fasten 
the rails to the ties. Here is the nut you had when he 
arrested you. Is this true?” 
" Whetethet? 


“Very well. Now, what was your obec in unsc:ew- 
ing that nut?” 
a reneguareinesail r 


THE MALEFACTOR 51 


“If I hadn’t needed the nut I wouldn’t have un- 
screwed it,” grunted Denis, glancing at the ceiling. 
_ “What did you need it for?” 

“What for? We make sinkers out of nuts.” 

“Whom do you mean by ‘we’?” 

““We—the people, the peasants of Klimoff.” 

“ Loekhere;.man;- ne playing*the idiot! Talk sense, 
and don’t lie to me about sinkers!” 

“T never lied in my life,” muttered Denis, blinking. 
“How can one possibly fish without sinkers, your 
honour? If you baited your hook with a shiner or a 
roach, do you think it would sink to the bottom with- 
outa sinker? Youwtell me Tamdying!” laughed Denis. 
“A fine bait-a shiner would make, floating on the top 
ofthe water! Bass and pike and eels always take 
ground bait; a floating bait would only be taken by a 
garfish, and they won’t often take it. Anyway, we 
haven’t any garfish in our river; theyslike-theopen.” 

“Why are you talking to me about garfish?”’ 

“Whats"that? Didn’t you ask me about fishing? 
All the gentlemen with us fish like that. The smallest 
boy knows more than to fish without a sinker. Of 
course, there are some people who don’t know anything, 
and they go fishing without sinkers. Foalssebey no 
laws?” 

“So you tell me you unscrewed this nut to use as a 
weight?” 

“What else should I have unscrewed it for? To 
play knuckle-bones with?” 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


52 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“But you might have made a weight out of a piece 
of lead or a bullet or a nail or something.” 

“Lead does not grow on every bush; it has to be 
bought; and a nail wouldn’t do. There is nothing so 
good to make a weight of as a nut. It is heavy and | 
has a hole i in a it. “i 


he.is. pretending.-to.be!.. Youwaet> as 
if.  cesieiadiiais -old.or had-just-dropped from the 
clouds» Don’t you see, you donkey, what the conse- 
quences of this unscrewing must be? If the watch- 
man hadn’t found you, one of the trains might have 
run off the track and killed everybody, and you would 
have killed them!” 

“God forbid, your honour! Do you think we are 
wicked heathen? Praise be to God, kind master, not 
only have we never psi soda we have never even 


mnt mn ii-t—Heergungneaeayeouiineteings?” 

Denis smirked and winked incredulously at the 
magistrate. “Huh! For how many years has the 
whole village been unscrewing nuts, and not an ac- 
cident yet? If I were to carry a rail away, or even to 
put a log across the track, then, perhaps, the train 
might upset, but, Lord! a nut—pooht”’ 

“But can’t you understand that the nuts fasten the 
rails to the ties?” 

“Yes, we understand that, and so we don’t unscrew 
them all; we always leave some; we do it carefully; 


He. 


THE MALEFACTOR 53 


“Another nut was tena Sa your “gdh was 
_ searched. Where did ‘you unscrew that one, and 
when?” 3! gaeewaees 
“Do you mean the nut that was lying under the 
little red Chest?” 
“5 ha’ : 


_founds- aieeeealiiegamemanmine + 

“T didn’t unscrew it; it was given to me by Ignashka, 
the son of one-eyed Simon. That is, I am speaking 
of the nut under the little chest; the one in the sleigh 
in the courtyard, Mitrofan and I unscrewed together.” 

“Which Mitrofan?” 

“Mitrofan Petroff. Haven’t you heard of him? 
He’s the man that makes fishing-nets and sellsethem 


54 . STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 
_ te-thesgeritiemen. He needs a lot of nuts in his busi- 


ness—a dozen to every net.” 

“Listen! In Article 1081 of the Code it says that 
“Whoever intentionally commits an act of injury to 
a railroad, whereby an accident might result to the 
trains, and who knows that such an accident might 
result ’"—dow rear that?-.wt ws’ ‘shall be 
severely oulidiaas You sucht not bat tae known 
what this unscrewing would lead to. The sentence is 
exile and hard labour.” 

“Of course, you know*that»better than Ido.» ‘We © 
peoplesdive: in darkness. How can we know such 
things?” 

“You know all about it perfectly well. You are 
lying and shamming ignorance.” 

“Why should I le? Ask anybody in the village 
if you don’t believe me. They never catch a thing 
butasaelk: without a sinker; even gudgeons hardly ever 
-bite- unless you useone.” 

**Now you are going to begin on those garfish again!” 
smiled the magistrate. 

“We don’t have garfish in our river. If we let the 
bait float on the top without a sinker we sometimes 
catch a perch, but not often.” 

“Oh, stop talking!” 

lence fell. Denis stood first’ on one leg and then on 
the other and stared at the table, winking rapidly as 
if he saw the sun before his eyes and not a green table- 
cover. The magistrate was writing quickly. 


THE MALEFACTOR 55 


“T shall have to arrest you and send you to prison.” 

Denis stopped winking, raised his heavy eyebrows, 
and looked inquiringly at the magistrate. 

“How do you mean—to prison? Your honour, I 
haven’t time! I have to go to the fair to collect the 
three roubles that Gregory owes me for tallow.” 

SStoptalkiig! Don’t interrupt!” 

“To prison! If there was any reason, of course I’d 
go, but, living as I do—what is it for? I haven’t 
robbed any one; I haven’t even been fighting. If it’s 
the payment of my rent you are thinking about, you 
mustn’t believe what the bailiff says, your honour. Ask 
any one of the gentlemen; that bailiff is a thief, sir!” 


z You are eertaptiog me. pe Simon!” called 
the magistrate, “take this man away.” 

“There are three brothers in our family,” murmured 
Denis as two strapping soldiers took hold of him and 
led him out of the room. “I can’t be responsible for 
my brother. Kuzma won’t pay his debts, and I, Denis, 
have to suffer! You call yourselves judges! If our 
old master, the general, were alive he would teach you 
judges your business. You ought to be reasonable, 
and not condemn so wildly. Flog a man if he deserves 
it——”’ 


MURDER WILL OUT 


EHIND three native horses, preserving the 
strictest incognito, Peter Posudin was hurrying 
along by back roads to the little county town of 
N , whither he had been summoned by an anony- 
mous letter. 

“T’m_ hidden; I’ve vanished like smoke—” he 
mused, burying his face in the collar of his coat. “‘Hav- 
ing hatched their dirty plots, those low brutes are 
now, no doubt, patting themselves on the back at the 
thought of how cleverly they have covered their tracks 
—ha! ha! I can just see their horror and surprise 
as, at the height of their triumph, they hear: ‘Bring 
Liapkin Tiapkin to me.’ * What a rumpus there will 
be! Ha! ha!” 

‘When he had wearied of musing, Posudin entered 
into conversation with his driver. As a man will who 
has a thirst for renown, he first of all inquired about 
himself. 

“Tell me, do you know who Posudin is?” he asked. 

“How should I not know?” grinned the driver. 
“We know who he is.” 

“What makes you laugh?” 


*Liapkin Tiapkin: one of the characters in Gogol’s “Inspector 
General.” 


56 


MURDER WILL OUT 57 


“Tt’s so funny. To think of not knowing who Po- 
sudin is, when one knows every little clerk! That’s 
what he’s here for, to be known by every one.” 

“Very well—and what do you think of him? Is he 
a good man?” 

““Not bad,” yawned the peasant. “He’s a good 
gentleman; he understands his business. It isn’t two 
years yet since he was sent here, and he has already 
done things.” 

“What has he done, exactly?” 

“He has done a lot of good, the Lord bless him. He 
has brought the railroad in and has sent Hohrinkoff 
out of our county. That Hohrinkoff was too much; 
he was a rascal and a fox. The former ones have al- 
ways played into his hand, but, when Posudin came, 
away went Hohrinkoff to the devil as if he had never 
existed. Yes, sir! Posudin you never could bribe— 
no, sir! If you were to give him a hundred, a thousand 
roubles, you couldn’t get him to saddle his conscience 
with a sin. No, indeed!” 

“Thank Heaven, at least I am understood in that 
quarter!” exulted Posudin. “That’s splendid!” 

“He’s a well-mannered gentleman. Some of our 
men went to him once with some grievances and he 
treated them exactly as if they had been gentlemen. 
He shook hands with them all and said: ‘Please be 
seated.’ He’s a quick, hot-headed kind of a gentle- 
man; he never takes time to talk quietly; it’s always— 
snort! snort! As for walking at a foot-pace, Lord, no! 


58 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


He’s always on the run—on the run. Our men had 
hardly time to get out a word before he had called out: 
‘My carriage!’ and had come straight over here. He 
came, and settled everything, and never even took a 
copeck. He’s a thousand times better than the last 
one, though, of course, that one was good, too. He was 
fine and important-looking, and no one in the whole 
county could shout louder than he could. When he 
was on the road you could hear him for ten miles, but 
when it comes to business the present one is a thousand 
times sharper. The present one has a brain in his 
head one hundred times as large as the other. He’s a 
fine man in every way; there’s only one trouble about 
him—he’s a drunkard!” 

“The devil!” thought Posudin. 

“How do you know,” he asked, “that I—that he is 
a drunkard?” 

“Oh, of course, your honour, I have never seen him 
drunk myself. Ill not say what’s not true, but peo- 
ple have told me—and they haven’t seen him drunk, 
either; but that is what is said about him. In public, 
or when he is visiting, or at a ball, or in company he 
never drinks; it’s at home that he soaks. He gets up 
in the morning, rubs his eyes, and his first thought is 
vodka! His valet brings him one glass and he at once 
asks for another, and so he keeps pouring it down all 
day. And I'll tell you a funny thing: for all that 
drinking he never turns a hair! He must know how 
to keep an eye on himself. When our Hohrinkoff used 


MURDER WILL OUT 59 


to drink, not only the people, even the dogs would 
howl; but Posudin—his nose doesn’t even turn red! 
He shuts himself up in his study and laps. He has 
arranged a little kind of box on his table with a tube, 
so that no one can know what he’s up to, and this box 
he keeps full of vodka. All one has to do is to stoop 
down to the little tube, suck, and get drunk. And out 
driving, too, in his portfolio——” 

“How do they know that?” thought the horror- 
stricken Posudin. “‘Good Lord, even that is known! 
How perfectly awful!” 

“And then, with the female sex, too, he’s a rascal!” 
The driver laughed and wagged his head. “It’s a 
scandal, it is! He has a bunch of ten of them. Two 
of them live in his house. One is Nastasia Ivanovna; 
he has her for a sort of a housekeeper; another is— 
what the devil is her name?—oh, yes, Liudmila Se> 
‘mionovna., She’s, as it were, his secretary. The 
head of them all is Nastasia. She has a great deal 
of power; people aren’t nearly as much afraid of him 
as they are of her. Ha! ha! The third scatterbrain 
lives on Katchalna Street. It’s disgraceful.” 

“He even knows them by name,” thought Posudin, 
turning scarlet. “And who is this that knows? A 
peasant, a carrier who has never even been to the city. 
Oh, how abominable! How disgusting! How vulgar!” 

“How did you find all this out?” he asked irritably. 

“People have told me. I haven’t seen it myself, but 
I have heard of it from people. Is it so hard to find 


60 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


out? You can’t stop the mouth of a valet or a coach- 
man, and then, probably, Nastasia herself goes up and 
down all the side streets boasting of her good luck to 
the women. No one can hide from human eyes. An- 
other thing, this Posudin has got a way now of making 
his trips of inspection in secret. In the old days, when 
he decided to go anywhere, he used to make it known 
a month beforehand, and there’d be such a rowing 
and thundering and ringing when he went—the Lord 
preserve us! He’d have men galloping ahead and men 
galloping behind and men galloping on either side. 
When he reached the place he was bound for he would 
take a nap and eat and drink his fill and then begin 
bawling his official business. He’d bawl and stamp his 
feet and then take another nap, and go back in the 
same way he came. But now when anything comes 
to his ears he watches for a chance to go off like a 
flash, secretly, so that no one shall see or know. Oh, 
it’s a joke! He slips out of his house, so the officials 
won't see him, and into the train. When he reaches 
the station he’s going to he doesn’t take post-horses 
or anything high class but hustles round and hires 
some peasant to drive him. He wraps himself all up 
like a woman and growls all the way like an old hound, 
so that his voice won’t be recognised. You’d split 
your sides laughing to hear people tell of it. The 
donkey drives along and thinks no one can tell who 
he is. But any one can recognise him who has any 
sense—bah!” 
“How do they recognise him?” 


MURDER WILL OUT 61 


“It’s very easy. In the old days, when our Hohrin- 
koff used to travel we used to know him by his heavy 
hands. If the man you were driving hit you on the 
mouth it meant that it was Hohrinkoff. But one 
can tell it’s Posudin at first sight. A simple passenger 
acts simply, but Posudin isn’t the man to care for 
simplicity. When he reaches, we'll say, a post-house 
he begins right away. It’s either too smelly or too 
hot or too cold; he sends for young chickens and fruits 
and jams of all kinds. That’s how he’s recognised at 
the post-houses; if any one asks for young chickens 
and fruit in winter, that’s Posudin. If any one care- 
fully says, ‘My dear fellow,’ and then makes every one 
chase around on all sorts of fool’s errands, you can 
swear to it it’s Posudin. And he doesn’t smell like 
other people, and he has his own way of lying down 
to sleep. At post-houses he lies down on the sofa, 
squirts scent all about him, and orders three candles 
to be put by his pillow. Then he lies down and reads 
papers. Even acat, let alone a person, who sees that 
can tell who the man is.” 

“That’s right,” thought Posudin. “Why didn’t I 
know that before?” 

“But, if necessary, he can be recognised without the 
fruit and the chickens. Everything is known by tele- 
graph. He can muffle up his face there and hide him- 
self all he likes; they know here that he’s coming. 
They’re expecting him. Before Posudin has so much as 
left home, here, by your leave, everything is ready for 
him! He comes to nab some man on the spot and 


62 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


arrest him, or to discharge another, and here they are 
laughing at him. ‘Yes, your Excellency,’ they say, 
‘even though you did come unexpectedly, see, every- 
thing is in order!’ He turns round and round and 
finally goes off the way he came. Yes, and he even 
praises every one and shakes hands all round and begs 
pardon for having disturbed us. That’safact! Didn’t 
you know that? Ho! ho! Your Excellency, we peo- 
ple are sharp here. Every one of us is sharp. It’s a 
pleasure to see what devils we are! Take, for instance, 
what happened to-day. As I was driving along this 
morning with an empty wagon, I saw the Jew restaurant 
keeper come flying toward me. ‘Where are you going, 
your Jewish honour?’ says I. ‘I’m taking some wine 
and some delicacies to the town of N. * says he. 
“They’re expecting Posudin there to-day.’ Wasn’t that 
clever? And Posudin, perhaps, was only just getting 
ready to start, and perhaps he was muffling up his face 
so that no one should know him. Perhaps he is on his 
way now and is thinking that no one knows he is com- 
ing; and yet there are the wine and the salmon and 
the cheese all ready for him. What do you think of 
that? He is thinking as he drives: ‘Now, boys, you'll 
catch it!’ And little the boys are caring. They’ve 
hidden everything long ago.” 

“Turn back!” cried Posudin hoarsely. “Turn 
round and drive back, you beast!” 

And the astonished driver turned round and drove 
back. 


THE TROUSSEAU 


ANY are the houses I have seen in my day—big 
ones and little ones, stone ones and wooden 
ones, old ones and new ones, but, more deeply than any 
I have seen, one has engraved itself upon my memory. 
It is not really a house, but a tiny cottage of one 
low story and three windows, and bears a strong re- 
semblance to a little, old, hunchbacked woman in a 
nightcap. Its stuccoed walls are painted white, the 
roof is of tiles and the chimney dilapidated, and it is 
all smothered in the foliage of mulberries, acacias, and 
poplar-trees planted there by the grandparents and 
great-grandparents of the present inhabitants. This 
dense mass of verdure completely hides it from view 
but does not prevent it from considering itself a lit- 
tle town house. Alongside its broad garden lie other 
broad, green gardens, and the result is named Moscow 
Street. 

The shutters of the little house are always closed; 
its inhabitants do not need light. They have no use 
for it. The windows are never opened because its in- 
mates dislike fresh air. People living among mulberry 
trees, acacias, and burdocks are indifferent to nature; 

63 


64 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


it is only to summer visitors that God has vouchsafed 
a capacity for appreciating her beauties. In regard to 
them the rest of mankind stagnates in profoundest 
ignorance. People do not value what they are rich in. 
We do not care for what we possess; we even dislike 
it. Outside the house lay an earthly paradise of ver- 
dure inhabited by happy birds; inside, alas! in sum- 
mer it was stifling and hot and in winter warm as in 
a Turkish bath, and tedious, oh, so tedious! 

I first visited the little house on business many 
years ago. I brought a message from its owner, 
Colonel Tchikamassoff, to his wife and daughter. I 
remember the first visit perfectly. I could never for- 
get it. 

Picture to yourself a stout little lady of forty years 
looking at you with surprise and fear as you enter the 
parlour from the hall. You are a “strange guest,” a 
“young man,” and this alone is enough to arouse 
astonishment and terror. You do not carry a cudgel 
or an axe or a revolver, and you are smiling pleasantly, 
but you are received with trepidation. 

““Whom have I the honour and pleasure of meet- 
ing?” asks the little lady in a trembling voice, and you 
know her to be the wife of Tchikamassoff. 

You introduce yourself and explain why you have 
come. Surprise and fear end in a shrill and joyful ex- 
clamation which echoes from the hall to the parlour, 
from the parlour to the dining-room, from the dining- 
room to the kitchen, and so into the very cellar. The 


THE TROUSSEAU 65 


whole house is soon filled with joyous little exclama- 
tions in various keys. Five minutes later, as you sit 
in the parlour on a large, soft, warm sofa, you can hear 
the whole of Moscow Street exclaiming. 

The air smelled of moth balls and of a pair of new kid 
shoes that lay wrapped in a little cloth on a chair be- 
side me. On the window-sills scraps of muslin lay 
among the geranium pots. Over them crawled lazy 
flies. On the wall hung an oil-portrait of a bishop, 
covered with glass, of which one corner was broken. 
Next to the bishop hung a row of ancestors with 
lemon-yellow, gipsy-looking faces. On the table lay 
a thimble, a spool of thread, and a half-darned stock- 
ing; on the floor lay dress patterns and a half-finished 
black blouse. In the next room two flustered and 
startled old women were hastily gathering up scraps 
of material from the floor. 

“You must forgive this dreadful disorder,” said the 
old lady. 

As she talked with me she glanced in confusion at 
the door behind which the old women were still pick- 
ing up the scraps of cloth. The door, too, seemed em- 
barrassed, and now opened a few inches, now shut 
again. 

“What do you want?” asked Madame Tchikamassoff 
of the door. : 

“Ou est mon cravate, lequel mon pére m’avait 
envoyé de Koursk?” asked a soft little female voice 
behind the door. 


” 66 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“Ah, est ce que Marie, que—oh, how can you?— 
nous avons donc chez nous un homme tres peu connu 
par nous—ask Lukeria.”’ 

“How well we talk French!” I read in Madame 
Tchikamassoff’s eyes as she blushed with pleasure. 

The door soon opened and there appeared a tall, 
thin girl of nineteen, in a muslin dress with a gold belt, 
from which hung, I remember, a mother-of-pearl fan. 
She came in, sat down, and blushed. First her long, 
slightly freckled nose blushed; from there the colour 
spread to her eyes and from her eyes to her temples. 

“My daughter,” said Madame Tchikamassoff; “and 
this Manetchka, is the young man who——” 

I introduced myself and expressed my surprise at 
seeing so many scraps of cloth about. Mother and 
daughter cast down their eyes. 

“We had the fair here on Ascension Day,” said the 
mother, “and we always buy all our materials then 
and sew all the rest of the year until the next fair. We 
never give our sewing out. My Peter does not make 
very much and we can’t allow ourselves any luxury. 
We have to do our own sewing.” 

“But who wears such quantities of clothes? There 
are only two of you!” 

“Oh, do you think we shall wear them? They are 
not to wear; this is—a trousseau!”’ 

“Oh, maman, how can you? What are you saying?” 
cried the daughter, flushing. “He might really think— 
I shall never marry! Never!” 


—* ~~ we ae 


THE TROUSSEAU 67 


She spoke thus, but at the very word “marry” her 
eyes sparkled. 

Tea was brought, with biscuits and jam and butter, 
and then I was treated to raspberries and cream. At 
seven we had a supper of six courses, and during supper 
I heard a loud yawn from the next room. I glanced 
at the door with surprise; only a man could have 
yawned like that. 

“That is{Gregory, my husband’s brother,” Madame 
Tchikamassoff explained, seeing my surprise. “He 
has been living with us since last year. You must 
excuse him, he can’t come out to see you; he is a 
great recluse and is afraid of strangers. He is plan- 
ning to enter a monastery. His feelings were very 
much hurt when in the service, and so, from mortifi- 
cation——” 

After supper Madame Tchikamassoff showed me a 
stole which Gregory had embroidered as an offering 
for the church. Manetchka cast aside her timidity 
for a moment and showed me a tobacco-pouch which 
she had embroidered for her papa. When I pre- 
tended to be thunderstruck by her work she blushed 
and whispered something in her mother’s ear. The 
mother beamed and invited me to come with her into 
the linen-closet. There I found five large chests and a 
great quantity of small trunks and boxes. 

“This is—the trousseau!” the mother whispered. 
“We made it all ourselves.” 

While still looking at these enormous chests, I be- 


68 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


gan to take leave of my hospitable hostesses. They 
made me promise to come again some day. 

I kept this promise seven years later, when I was 
sent to the little town as an adviser in a lawsuit. As 
I entered the familiar cottage I heard the same ex- 
clamations; they recognised me! Of course they did! 
_ My first visit had been a great event in their lives, 
and events, when they are few and far between, are 
long remembered. The mother, stouter than ever and 
now growing grey, was on the floor cutting out some 
blue material; the daughter was sitting on the sofa 
embroidering. There were the same scraps of cloth, 
the same smell of moth balls, the same portrait with 
the broken corner. 

But there were changes, nevertheless. A portrait of 
Peter Tchikamassoff hung beside that of the bishop, 
and the ladies were in mourning. He had died one 
week after his promotion to the rank of general. 

We recalled old times and the general’s widow be- 
gan to weep. 

“We have had a great sorrow,” she said. “Peter— 
have you heard it?—is no longer with us. We are all 
alone now and have to shift for ourselves. Gregory is 
still alive, but we can’t say anything good of him. He 
couldn’t get into the monastery on account of—of 
drink, and he drinks more than ever now, from grief. 
I am going to the marshal very soon to lodge a com- 
plaint against him. Only think, he has opened the 
chests several times and—and has taken out Ma- 


THE TROUSSEAU 69 


netchka’s trousseau and given it away to the pilgrims! 
He has taken all there was in two chests! If this goes 
on my Manetchka will be left with no trousseau at 
all.” 

“What are you saying, mother?” cried Manetchka 
n confusion. “He might really think that—I shall 
never, never be married!” 

Manetchka looked upward at the ceiling with hope 
and inspiration in her eyes, and it was clear that she 
lid not believe what she had said. 

A little man darted into the hall and slipped by 
ike a mouse. He was bald and wore a brown coat 
ind goloshes instead of boots. “‘ Probably Gregory,” I 
hought. 

I looked at the mother and daughter. Both had 
iged greatly. The hair of the mother was streaked 
vith silver, and the daughter had faded and drooped, 
o that the mother now looked not more than five 
years older than her child. 

“I am going to the marshal soon,” said the old lady, 
orgetting that she had already spoken of this. “I 
vant to lodge a complaint against Gregory. He takes 
‘verything that we sew and gives it away for the 
alvation of souls) My Manetchka has been left with- 
ut a trousseau!”’ 

Manetchka blushed, but this time she did not utter 
. word. 

“We shall have to make it all over again, and we are 
.ot very rich; we are all alone now, she and I.” 


70 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“We are all alone,’ Manetchka repeated. 

Last year fate again took me to the little house. 
Going into the parlour, I saw the old lady Tchikamas- 
soff. She was dressed all in black, and was sitting on 
the sofa and sewing. By her side sat a little old man 
in a brown coat with goloshes instead of boots. At 
the sight of me he jumped up and ran out of the room. 

In answer to my greeting the little old lady smiled 
and said: “Je suis charmée de vous revoir, monsieur.” 

““What are you sewing?” I asked after a pause. 

“This is a chemise,” she answered. “When it is 
finished I shall take it to the priest’s house or else 
Gregory will carry it off. I hide everything now at the 
priest’s,” she said in a whisper. And, glancing at a 
picture of her daughter that stood on the table before 
her, she sighed and said: 

“You see, we are all alone now.” 

But where was the daughter? Where was Ma- 
netchka? I did not ask. I did not want to ask the 
old lady dressed in deep mourning, and during all my 
visit in the little house and while I was afterward 
taking my leave, no Manetchka came in to see me, 
neither did I hear her voice nor her light, timid step. 
I understood now, and my heart grew sad. 


THE DECORATION 


by PUSTIAKOFF,|a teacher in a military school, 
lived next door to his friend [Lieutenant Leden- 
soft. Toward him he bent his steps one New Year’s 
norning. 

“The thing is this, Grisha,” he said after the cus- 
oomary New Year’s greetings had passed between 
hem, “I wouldn’t trouble you unless it were on very 
mportant business. Won’t you please lend me your 
Irder of St. Stanislas for to-day? You see, I am dining 
t/Spitchkin, e merchant’s; you know what that old 
wretch Spitchkin is; he simply worships a decoration, 
und any one who doesn’t sport something round his 
1eck or in his buttonhole is pretty nearly a scoundrel 
n his opinion, Besides, he has two daughters, | Anas- 
‘asia, you know, and Zina. I ask you as a friend— 
you understand, don’t you, old man? Let me have it, 
[ implore you!” 

Pustiakoff uttered all this stammering and blush- 
ng and glancing apprehensively at the door. The 
ieutenant scolded a bit and then gave his consent. 

At two o'clock Pustiakoff drove to the Spitchkin’s 
in a cab, and, unbuttoning his fur coat as he drove, 
ooked down at his chest. There shone the gold and 


zleamed the enamel of the borrowed decoration. 
71 


72 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“Somehow, one seems to feel more self-respecting,” 
thought the teacher, clearing his throat. “Here’s a 
trifle not worth more than five roubles, and yet what a 
furor it will create!” 

On reaching Spitchkin’s house he threw open his 
coat and slowly paid off the cabman. The man, so 
it seemed to him, was petrified at the sight of his 
epaulets, his buttons, and his decoration. Pustia- 
koff coughed with self-satisfaction and entered the 
house. As he took off his coat in the hall he looked 
into the dining-room. There, at the long table, sat 
fifteen people at dinner. He heard talking and the 
clattering of dishes. 

““Who rang the bell?” he heard the host ask. “Why, 
it’s you, Pustiakoff! Come in! You're a little bit 
late, but no matter; we have only just sat down.” 

Pustiakoff puffed out his chest, threw up his head, 
and, rubbing his hands together, entered the room. 
But there something perfectly terrible met his sight. 
At the table next to Zina sat his colleague, the French 
teacher \Tremblant! ] To let the Frenchman see the 
decoration would be to expose himself to a host of the 
most disagreeable questions, to disgrace himself for 
ever, to ruin his reputation. Pustiakoff’s first impulse 
was to tear it off or else to rush from the room, but it 
was tightly sewn on, and retreat was now out of the 
question. Hastily covering the decoration with his 
right hand, he bowed awkwardly to the company and, 
without shaking hands with any one, dropped heavily 


THE DECORATION 73 


into an empty chair. This happened to be exactly 
opposite his colleague, the Frenchman. 

“He must have been drinking,” thought Spitchkin, 
seeing him overwhelmed with confusion. 

A plate of soup was put before Pustiakoff. He took 
up his spoon with his left hand, but, remembering that 
one can’t eat with one’s left hand in polite society, 
he explained that he had already had dinner and was 
not at all hungry. 

“*Merci—I—I have already eaten,” he stammered. 
“I went to call on my uncle Elegeff the Watts and he 
begged me—to—to have dinner.” 

The soul of Pustiakoff was filled with agony and 
vexation, his soup exhaled the most delicious aroma, 
and an extraordinarily appetising steam rose from the 
boiled sturgeon. The teacher tried to set his right 
hand free by covering the decoration with his left, but 
this was too inconvenient. 

“They would be sure to catch sight of it,” he thought, 
“and my arm would be stretched right across my 
chest as if I were about to sing a song. Lord! If only 
this meal might soon be over! I shall go and have 
dinner at the tavern.” 

At the end of the third course he glanced timidly 
out of the corner of his eye at the Frenchman. For 
some reason Tremblant, too, was overcome with em- 
barrassment; he kept looking at him and was not 
eating anything, either. As their glances met they 
became still more confused and dropped their eyes to 
their empty plates. 


74 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


**He must have seen it, the beast!” thought Pustia- 
koff. “I can see by his ugly face that he has! The 
wretch is a sneak and will report it to the director to- 
morrow.” 

The hosts and their guests finished a fourth course 
and then, as fate would have it, a fifth. 

A tall man with wide, hairy nostrils, a hooked nose, 
and eyes that were by nature half closed rose from his 
seat. He smoothed his hair and began: 

“‘T—er—I—er—propose that we drink to the health 
of the ladies here present!” 

The diners rose noisily and took up their glasses. A 
mighty “hurrah!” filled the house. The ladies smiled 
and held out their glasses. Pustiakoff got up and took 
his in his left hand. 

“Pustiakoff, may I trouble you to pass this to the 
lady next you?” said some man, handing him a glass. 
**Make her drink it!” 

This time, to his unspeakable horror, Pustiakoff 
found himself obliged to bring his right hand into 
action. The decoration, with its crumpled red ribbon, 
glittered as it saw the light at last. The teacher 
turned pale, dropped his head, and threw a terrified 
glance in the direction of the Frenchman. The latter 
was looking at him with wondering, curious eyes. A 
sly smile curved his lips and the embarrassment slowly 
faded from his face. 

“Monsieur Tremblant,” said the host, “pass the 
bottle, if you please!” 


THE DECORATION 75 


Tremblant stretched out his hand irresolutely toward 
the bottle, and—oh, rapture! Pustiakoff saw a dec- 
oration on his breast! And it was not just a plain St. 
Stanislas, it was actually the Order of St. Anne! So 
the Frenchman, too, had been duping them! Pustia- 
koff collapsed in his chair and laughed with delight. 
There was no need now to conceal his decoration! 
Both were guilty of the same sin; neither could give 
the other away. 

“Ah-hem!” roared Spitchkin as his eyes caught the 
Order of St. Stanislas on the teacher’s breast. 

“Yes,” said Pustiakoff, “it’s a strange thing, Trem- 
blant, how few presentations were made these holi- 
days. You and I are the only ones of all that crowd 
that have been decorated. A re-mark-able thing!” 

Tremblant nodded gaily and proudly exhibited the 
left lapel of his coat on which flaunted the Order of St. 
Anne. 

After dinner Pustiakoff made the round of all the 
rooms and showed his decoration to the young ladies. 
His heart was easy and light even if hunger did pinch 
him a bit at the waist-line. 

“Tf I had only known,” he thought, looking enviously 
at Tremblant chatting with Spitchkin on the subject of 
decorations, “I would have gone higher and swiped a 
Vladimir. Oh, why didn’t I have more sense!” 

This was the only thought that tormented him. 
Otherwise he was perfectly happy. 


THE MAN IN A CASE 


N the outskirts of the village of Mironitski, in | 
a shed belonging to the bailiff Prokofi, some be- 
lated huntsmen were encamped for the night. There 
were two of them: the veterinary surgeon Ivan Ivan- 
itch and the school-teacher Burkin. Ivan Ivanitch 
had a rather strange, hyphenated surname, Tchimsha- 
Himalaiski, which did not suit him at all, and so he was 
known all over the province simply by his two Chris- 
tian names. He lived on a stud-f near the town 
and had now come out hunting to get a breath of fresh 
air. Burkin, the school-teacher, had long been at home 
in this neighbourhood, for he came every year as the 
guest of Count P: : 

They were not asleep. Ivan Ivanitch, a tall, spare 
old man with a long moustache, sat at the door of the 
shed, with the moon shining on him, smoking his pipe. 
Burkin lay inside on the hay and was invisible in the 
shadows. | 

They were telling stories. Among other things, they 
spoke of Mavra, the bailiff’s wife, a healthy, intelli- 
gent woman who had never in her life been outside of 
her native village and who had never seen the town 


nor the railway; they remembered that she had sat 
; 76 


THE MAN IN A CASE td 


beside the stove now for the last ten years, never 
going out into the street except after_nightfall— 
“There is nothing so very surprising in that,” said 
Burkin. “There are not a few people in this world 
who, like hermit-crabs and snails, are always trying to 
retire into their shells. Perhaps this is a manifesta- 
tion of atavism, a harking back to the time when man’s 
forebears were not yet gregarious animals but lived 
alone in their dens, or perhaps it is simply one of the 
many phases of human character—who can say? I 
am not an anthropologist and it is not my business to 
meddle with such questions; I only mean to say that 
people like Mavra are not an uncommon phenomenon. 
Here! We don’t have to go far to seek an illustration. 
Two months ago a certain Byelinkoff died in our town, 
a colleague of mine, a teacher of Greek. You must 
have heard of him. He was remarkable for one thing: 
no matter how fine the weather was, he always went 
out in goloshes, carrying an umbrella and wearing a 
warm, wadded overcoat. And his umbrella he always 
kept in a case and his watch was in a case of grey 
chamois, and when he took out his penknife to sharpen 
a pencil that, too, was in a little case. Even his face 
seemed to be in a case, for he always kept it con- 
cealed behind the turned-up collar of his coat. He wore 
dark spectacles and a warm waistcoat, and he kept 
cotton-wool in his ears and he had the hood raised 
whenever he got into a cab. In a word, one saw in 
this man a perpetual and irresistible longing to wrap 


78 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


some covering around himself—one might call it a 
case—which would isolate him from external impres- 
sions. Reality chafed and alarmed him and kept him 
in a state of perpetual apprehension, and it was, per- 
haps, to justify his timidity and his aversion to the 
present that he always exalted the past and things 
which had never existed. The ancient languages which 
he taught were at bottom the goloshes and umbrella 
behind which he hid himself from the realities of ex- 
istence. 3 

““*QOh, how musical, how beautiful is the Greek 
tongue!’ he would cry with a beaming look, and, as if 
in proof of what he had said, he would half shut his 
eyes, hold up one finger, and pronounce the word 
‘anthropos’! 

‘And his opinions, too, Byelinkoff tried to confine 
in a case. Only bulletins and newspaper articles in 
which something was prohibited were clear to him. 
If he saw a bulletin forbidding the scholars to go out 
on the street after nine o’clock, or if he read an article 
enjoining him from carnal love, that was fixed and clear 
to him—and basta! For to him there was always an 
element of doubt, something unspoken and confused, 
concealed in licence and liberty of action. When it 
was permitted to start a dramatic or reading club in 
the town he would shake his head and say softly: 

“ “That is all very well and very fine, but I shouldn’t 
wonder if something unpleasant would come of it.’ 

“Every transgression and deviation from the right 


i i 


THE MAN IN A CASE 79 


plunged him into dejection, although one wondered 
what business it was of his. If one of his colleagues 
came late to prayers, or if he heard rumours of some 
prank of the schoolboys, or if one of the lady super- 
intendents was seen late at night with an officer, he 
would grow tremendously excited and always insist 
that something unpleasant would come of it. At the 
teachers’ meetings he used to drive us absolutely mad 
by his prudence and his scruples and his absolutely 
case-like reflections. ‘Oh,’ he would cry, ‘the boys 
and girls in the school behave so very badly and make 
such a noise in the classrooms! Oh, what if this should 
reach the governor’s ears, and what if something un- 
pleasant should come of it? If only Petroff could be 
expelled from the second class and Yegorieff from the 
fourth, how good it would be!’ And what was the 
result? We would grow so oppressed with his sigh- 
ing and his moaning and his dark spectacles on his 
white face that we would give in—give Petroff and 
Yegorieff bad-conduct marks, put them under arrest, 
and finally expel them. 

“He had a strange habit—he used to make the tour 
of our rooms. He would come into a master’s room 
and just sit and say nothing, as if he were looking for 
something. He would sit like that for an hour or so 
and then would go out. This he called ‘keeping on 
good terms with his comrades,’ but it was plainly a 
heavy burden for him to come and sit with us, and he 
only did it because he considered it his duty as our 


80 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


comrade. All of us teachers were afraid of him. 
Even the director feared him. Our teachers are all a 
thoughtful and thoroughly steady lot, brought up on 
Turgenieff and Shedrin, and yet this man, with his 
goloshes and his umbrella, held the whole school in 
the hollow of his hand for fifteen years. The whole 
school, did I say? The whole town! The ladies did 
not dare to get up little plays on Saturday evenings 
for fear he should hear of it, and the clergy were 
ashamed to eat meat and play cards in his presence. 
Under the influence of men like Byelinkoff the people 
of our town in the last ten or fifteen years have be- 
gun to fear everything. They are afraid of sending 
letters, of making acquaintances, of speaking aloud, of 
reading books, of helping or teaching the poor——” 

Ivan Ivanitch coughed as a sign that he wanted to 
make a remark, but he first finished his pipe, then 
gazed at the moon, and then at last, pausing at in- 
tervals, said: 

“Yes, they are thoughtful and steady; they read 
Shedrin and Turgenieff and others, and therefore they 
have submitted patiently—that is just it.” 

“Byelinkoff lived in the same house that I did,” 
Burkin went on, “on the same floor. His door was op- 
posite mine. We often met, and I was familiar with his 
domestic life. It was the same old story when he was 
at home. He wore a dressing-gown and a nightcap and 
had shutters to his windows and bolts to his doors—a 
perfect array of restraints and restrictions and of ‘oh- 


€ 
THE MAN IN A CASE 81 


something-unpleasant-might-come-of-its.” Lenten fare 
was bad for the health, but to eat flesh was impos- 
sible because somebody might say that Byelinkoff did 
not keep the fasts; therefore he ate perch fried in 
butter, which was not Lenten fare, but neither could 
it be called meat. He would not keep a woman ser- 
vant for fear that people might think ill of him, so he 
employed as a cook an old man named Afanasi, a 
besotted semi-idiot of sixty who had once been an 
officer’s servant and could cook after a fashion. This 
Afanasi would stand at the door with folded arms, sigh 
deeply, and always mutter one and the same thing: 

“*There’s a whole lot of them out to-day!’ 

“Byelinkoff’s bedroom was like a little box and 
curtains hung round his bed. When he went to sleep 
he would pull the blankets over his head. The room 
would be stuffy and hot, the wind rattle the closed 
doors and rumble in the stove, and sighs, ominous 
sighs, would be heard from the kitchen; and he would 
shake under his bedclothes. He was afraid that some- 
thing unpleasant might come of it—that Afanasi 
might murder him, that burglars might break in. All 
night he would be a prey to alarming dreams, and in 
the morning, as we walked to the school together, he 
would be melancholy and pale, and one could see that 
the crowded school toward which he was going dis- 
mayed him and was repugnant to his whole being, and 
that it was burdensome for a man of his solitary dis- 
position to be walking beside me, 


82 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


***There is so much noise in the classrooms,’ he 
would say as if seeking an explanation of his depres- 
sion. 

** And think of it, this teacher of Greek, this man in 
a case, once very nearly got married!” 

Ivan Ivanitch looked quickly round into the shed 
and said: 

“You’re joking!” 

“Yes, he nearly got married, strange as it may ap- 
pear. A new teacher of history and geography was 
appointed to our school, a certain Little Russian named 
Kovalenko. He did not come alone but brought his 
sister Varenka with him. He was young and tall 
and dark, with huge hands and a face from which it 
could be guessed that he possessed a bass voice. As a 
_ matter of fact, when he spoke his voice did sound as if 
it were coming out of a barrel—boo—boo—boo—. As 
for her, she was no longer young, thirty perhaps, but 
she was tall, too, and graceful, dark-eyed and red- 
cheeked—a sugar-plum of a girl, and so boisterous and 
jolly! She was always singing Little Russian songs and 
ha-ha-ing. At the slightest provocation she would 
break into loud peals of laughter—ha! ha! ha! I re- 
member the first time we met the Kovalenkos; it was at 
a birthday party at the director’s. Among the stern, 
tiresome teachers who go to birthday parties out of 
a sense of duty, we suddenly beheld a new Aphrodite 
risen from the waves, strolling about with her arms 
akimbo, laughing, singing, and dancing. She sang 


THE MAN IN A CASE 83 


‘The Wind Blows’ with feeling, and then another song, 
and then another, and fascinated us all, even Byelin- 
koff. He sat down beside her and said with a sweet 
smile: | 

“<The Little Russian tongue with its tenderness and 
pleasant sonorousness reminds me of ancient Greek.’ 

“This flattered her, and she began earnestly and 
with feeling to tell him that she had a farm in the 
province of Gadiatch, that her mamma lived there 
and that there were such pears and such melons there 
and such inns! Little Russians call gourds ‘inns,’ and 
make a soup out of the little red ones and the lit- 
tle blue ones that is ‘so good, so good it is simply— 
awful!’ 

“We listened and listened, and the same thought 
suddenly crossed the minds of all of us. 

“**How nice it would be to make a match between 
them!” said the director’s wife to me quietly. 

“For some reason we all remembered that our Bye- 
linkoff was unmarried, and it now seemed strange to 
us that until this moment we had not noticed, had some- 
how quite overlooked this important detail in his life. 
By the way, how does he regard women? we asked our- 
selves. How does he solve this daily problem? This 
had not interested us before at all; perhaps we had 
not even entertained the idea that a man who wore 
goloshes in all weathers and slept behind bed curtains 
could possibly fall in love. 

“*He is already long past forty, but she is thirty 


84 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


herself,’ the director’s wife expressed her opinion. ‘I 
think she would marry him.’ 

““How many wrong and foolish deeds are committed 
in our country towns because we are bored! What 
need was there to have tried to marry off Byelinkoff, 
whom one could not even conceive of as being married? 
The director’s wife and the inspector’s wife and all the 
ladies of our school brightened and bloomed as if they 
had suddenly discovered the object of their existence. 
The director’s wife takes a box at the theatre, and, be- 
hold! in it sits Varenka waving afan,radiant and happy, 
and beside her is Byelinkoff, small and depressed, as 
if they had pulled him out of his room with a pair of 
pincers. I give an evening party, and the ladies in- 
sist that I shall invite both Byelinkoff and Varenka. 
In a word, the mills were grinding. It appeared that 
Varenka was not averse to marriage. It was not 
particularly cheerful for her living at her brother’s, for 
they scolded and squabbled the day long. Here’s a 
picture for you: Kovalenko is stalking down the street, 
a tall, lusty fellow in an embroidered shirt with his 
forelock hanging down over his forehead from under 
the brim of his cap. In one hand he carries a bundle 
of books, in the other a thick, knotted stick. Behind 
him walks his sister, also carrying books. 

“*But you haven’t read it, Mihailik!’ she argues 
loudly. ‘I tell you, I swear to you, you haven’t read 
it at all!’ 

“But I tell you I have read it!’ shouts Kovalenko, 
rattling his stick on the sidewalk, 


oe ge ee ee a lt 


THE MAN IN A CASE 85 


“*Oh, Lord have mercy, Mintchik! What are you 
getting so angry about; does it matter?’ 

** *But I tell you that I have read it!’ shouts Kova- 
lenko still louder. 

“And at home, as soon as an outsider came in they 
would open fire at each other. A life like that was prob- 
ably growing wearisome for her; she wanted a nook of 
her own; and then her age should be taken into ac- 
count; at her years there’s little time for picking and 
choosing—a woman takes what she can get, even if the 
man be a teacher of Greek. And, as a matter of fact, 
the majority of our young ladies will marry whom 
they can, only to get married. Well, be it as it may, 
.Varenka began to show our Byelinkoff marked favour. 

“And what about Byelinkoff? He called on the 
Kovalenkos as he did on the rest of us. He would go 
to their rooms and sit and say nothing. He would 
say nothing, but Varenka would sing ‘The Wind 
Blows’ for him, or gaze at him pensively out of her 
dark eyes, or suddenly break into peals of merry 
laughter—ha! ha! ha! 

“In affairs of the heart, and especially in marriage, 
a large part is played by suggestion. Every one—both 
the ladies and Byelinkoff’s colleagues—all began to as- 
sure him that he ought to get married, that there was 
nothing for him to do but to marry. We all con- 
gratulated him and said all sorts of silly things with 
grave faces—that marriage was a serious step, and so 
forth. Besides that, Varenka was pretty and attrac- 


86 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


tive; she was the daughter of a state councilor and 
owned a farm of her own; and, above all, she was the 
first woman who had treated him kindly and affec- 
tionately. His head was turned and he fancied that 
he really must marry.” 

“Now would have been the time to get rid of his 
goloshes and his umbrella,” said Ivan Ivanitch. 

“Will you believe it? That proved to be impossible. 
He put a photograph of Varenka on his table, and kept 
coming to me and talking to me about Varenka and 
family life, and about what a serious step marriage 
was; he was much at the Kovalenkos, but he did not 
change his way of living one atom. On the contrary, 
his resolve to get married affected him painfully; he 
grew thin and pale and seemed to shrink still farther 
into his case. 

***T like Miss Varenka,’ he said to me once with a 
wry smile, ‘and I know every man ought to marry, but 
—all this has happened so suddenly; I must think it 
over a bit.’ 

“* “What is there to think over?’ I answered. ‘Marry 
her! That’s all there is to it.’ 

“No, marriage is a serious step; one must first 
weigh the consequences and duties and responsibili- 
ties—so that nothing unpleasant shall come of it. All 
this worries me so that I can’t sleep any more at night. 
And, to tell you the truth, I am alarmed: she and her 
brother have such a queer way of thinking; they 
reason somehow so strangely, and she has a very bold 


THE MAN IN A CASE 87 


character. One might marry her and, before one knew 
it, get mixed up in some scandal.’ 

“And so he did not propose, but still kept putting 
it off, to the deep chagrin of the director’s wife and of 
all of our ladies; he still kept weighing those duties 
and responsibilities, though he went walking every day 
with Varenka, thinking, no doubt, that this was due to 
a man placed as he was. He still kept coming to me 
to discuss family life. 

“But in all probability he would have proposed at 
last, and one of those bad and foolish matches would 
have been consummated, as so many thousands are, 
simply because people have nothing better to do with 
themselves, had we not been suddenly overwhelmed 
by a colossal scandal. 

“TI must tell you that Varenka’s brother could not 
abide Byelinkoff. 

“*T can’t understand,’ he would say to us with a 
shrug of his shoulders, ‘I can’t imagine how you can 
stomach that sneak with his horrid face. Oh, friends, 
how can you live here? Your whole atmosphere ber 
is stifling and nauseating. Are you instructors 4s 
teachers? No, you are sycophants, and this isn’t at 
ple of learning; it’s a detective office, stinking as so 
a police court. No, brothers, I’m going to stay 
a little while longer, and then I’m going back t 
farm to catch crawfish and teach young Little Rus 
I am going, and you can stay here with your Juc 

“Or else he would laugh and laugh till the 


88 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


rolled down his cheeks, now in a deep voice, now in a 
high squeaky one, and demand of me, spreading out 
his hands: 

“What does he sit in my room for? What is he 
after? He just sits and stares.’ 

“He even called Byelinkoff ‘the spider,’ and, of 
course, we avoided mentioning to him that his sister 
was thinking of marrying this ‘spider.’ When the 
director’s wife once hinted to him that it would be a 
good idea to settle his sister with such a steady, uni- 
versally respected man as Byelinkoff he frowned and 
growled: 

“ *That’s none of my business. Let her marry a 
reptile if she likes. I can’t endure interfering in other 
people’s affairs.’ 

“And now listen to what followed. Some wag made 
a caricature of Byelinkoff in goloshes and cotton 
trousers, holding up an umbrella, with Varenka on 
his arm. Underneath was written: ‘The Amorous An- 
thropos.’ His expression was caught to perfection. 
 e artist must have worked more nights than one, 

. every teacher in our school, every teacher in the 

inary, and every official received a copy. Byelin- 
- zot one, too. The caricature made the most pain- 
‘pression on him. 
‘e were coming out of our house together. It 
ym a Sunday, the first of May, and all. of us, 
ers and pupils, had agreed to meet at the school 
rom there walk out beyond the town into the 


THE MAN IN A CASE 89 


woods. So we came out together, and his face was 
absolutely green; he looked like a thunder-cloud. 

“*What bad, what unkind people there are!’ he 
burst out, and his lips quivered. 

“T really felt sorry for him. As we » walked along, 
we suddenly saw Kovalenko riding toward us on a 
bicycle, followed by Varenka, also on a bicycle. She 
was scarlet and dusty, but merry and gay neverthe- 
less. 

** *We are going on ahead!’ she cried. ‘This weather 
is so glorious, so glorious, it’s simply awful!’ 

“And they disappeared from view. 

“Our Byelinkoff’s face turned from green to white, 
and he seemed paralysed. He stopped and looked at 
me. 

** * Allow me, what do I see?’ he asked. ‘Or does my 
eyesight deceive me? Is it proper for school-teachers 
and women to ride bicycles?’ 

“**What is there improper about it?’ said I. ‘Let 
them ride to their hearts’ content.’ 

***But how is it possible?’ he shrieked, stupefied by 
my calmness. ‘What are you saying?’ 

“‘And he was so shocked that he did not want to go 
on any farther, but turned and went home. 

“Next day he rubbed his hands nervously all the 
time and trembled, and we could see from his face that 
he was not well. He left his work—the first time in 
his life that this had happened to him—and did not 
come to dinner. Toward evening he dressed himself 


90 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


warmly, although the weather was now quite summer- 
like, and crawled over to the Kovalenkos. Varenka 
was not at home; he found her brother alone. 

***Sit down,’ said Kovalenko coldly and frowned. 
He looked sleepy; he had just had a nap after his 
dinner and was in a very bad humour. 

“Byelinkoff sat for ten minutes in silence and then 
said: 

““*T have come to you to relieve my mind. I am 
very, very much grieved. Some lampooner has made 
a picture of myself and a person who is near to us both 
in a ridiculous position. I consider it my duty to as- 
sure you that I have had nothing to do with this; I 
have never given any occasion for such a jest; I have 
always behaved with perfect propriety all the time.’ 

“Kovalenko sat moodily without saying a word. 
Byelinkoff waited a few minutes and then went on in 
a sad, low voice: 

“And I have something else to say to you. I have 
been a teacher for many years, and your career is just 
beginning: I consider it my duty as an older man to 
give you a word of warning. You ride the bicycle— 
now, this amusement is quite improper for a teacher of 
the young.’ 

*** Why?’ asked Kovalenko in a deep voice. 

““Need I really explain that to you, Kovalenko? 
Isn’t it obvious? If the master goes about on a 
bicycle, what is there left for the pupils to go about 
on? Only their heads! And if permission to do it 


THE MAN IN A CASE 91 


has not been given in a bulletin, it must not be done. 
I was horrified yesterday. My head swam when I 
saw your sister—a woman or a girl on a bicycle—how 
terrible!’ 

“** What do you want, anyhow?’ 

“*T only want one thing: I want to caution you. 
You are a young man, the future lies before you, you 
must be very, very careful, or you will make a mistake. 
Oh, what a mistake you will make! You go about 
wearing embroidered shirts, you are always on the 
street with some book or other, and now you ride a 
bicycle! The director will hear of it; it will reach the 
ears of the trustees that you and your sister ride the 
bicycle—what is the use?’ 

“Tt is nobody’s business whether my sister and I 
ride the bicycle or not,’ said Kovalenko flushing deeply. 
‘And whoever interferes in my domestic and family 
affairs I will kick to the devil.’ 

“Byelinkoff paled and rose. 

“*Tf you talk to me in that way I cannot con- 
tinue,’ he said. ‘I must ask you never to refer to the 
heads of the school in that tone in my presence. You 
should have more respect for the authorities.’ 

“*Did I say anything against the authorities?’ 
asked Kovalenko, glaring angrily at him. ‘Please 
leave me alone! I am an honourable man, and I 
decline to talk to a person like you. I don’t like 
sneaks!’ 

“Byelinkoff began nervously to bustle about and 


92 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


put on his things. You see, this was the first time in 
his life that he had heard such rudeness. 

*** You can say what you like,’ he cried as he stepped 
out of the hall onto the landing of the stairs. ‘I must 
only warn you of one thing. Some one may have over- 
heard our conversation and I shall have to report it 
to the director in its principal features, as it might be 
misinterpreted and something unpleasant might come 
of it. I shall be obliged to do this.’ 

***To report it? Go ahead, report it!’ 

**Kovalenko seized him by the nape of the neck and 
pushed, and Byelinkoff tumbled down-stairs with his 
goloshes rattling after him. The staircase was long 
and steep, but he rolled safely to the bottom, picked 
himself up, and touched his nose to make sure that his 
spectacles were all right. At the very moment of his 
descent Varenka had come in with two ladies; they 
stood at the foot of the stairs and watched him, and 
for Byelinkoff this was the most terrible thing of all. 
He would rather have broken his neck and both legs 
than to have appeared ridiculous; the whole town 
would now know it, the director, the trustees would 
hear of it—oh, something unpleasant would come of 
it! There would be another caricature, and the end 
of it would be that he would have to resign. 

“As he picked himself up Varenka recognised him. 
When she caught sight of his absurd face, his wrinkled 
overcoat, and his goloshes, not knowing what had hap- 
pened but supposing that he had fallen down-stairs of 


THE MAN IN A CASE 93 


his own accord, she could not control herself and 
laughed till the whole house rang: 


“*Ha! ha! ha!’ 

“This pealing and rippling ‘ha! ha! ha!’ settled 
everythi it put an end to the wedding and to the 
earthly career of Byelinkoff. 


“He did not hear what Varenka said to him; he saw 
nothing before his eyes. When he reached home he 
first took Varenka’s picture off the table, then he went 
to bed and never got up again. 

“Three days later Afanasi came to me and asked me 
whether he ought not to send for a doctor, as something 
was happening to his master. I went to see Byelin- 
koff. He was lying speechless behind his bed curtains, 
covered with a blanket, and when a question was 
asked him he only answered yes or no, and not another 
sound did he utter. There he lay, and about the bed 
roamed Afanasi, gloomy, scowling, sighing profoundly, 
and reeking of vodka like a tap-room. 

“A month later Byelinkoff died. We all went to 
his funeral, that is, the boys’ and girls’ schools and the 
seminary. As he lay in his coffin the expression on 
his face was timid and sweet, even gay, as if he were 
glad to be put in a case at last out of which he need 
never rise. Yes, he had attained his ideal! As if in 
his honour, the day of his funeral was overcast and 
rainy, and all of us wore goloshes and carried umbrellas. 
Varenka, too, was at the funeral and burst into tears 
when the coffin was lowered into the grave. I have 


94 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


noticed that Little Russian women always either laugh 
or cry, they know no middle state. 

“I must confess that it is a great pleasure to bury 
such people as Byelinkoff. On our way back from the 
cemetery we all wore sober, Lenten expressions; no 
one wished to betray this feeling of pleasure; the same 
feeling that we used to have long, long ago in childhood 
when our elders went away from home and we could 
run about the garden for a few hours in perfect liberty. 
Oh, liberty, liberty! Even a hint, even a faint hope 
of its possibility lends the soul wings, does it not? 

“We returned from the cemetery in a good humour, 
but before a week had elapsed our life was trickling 
on as sternly, as wearily, as senselessly as before; a 
life not prohibited in a bulletin and yet not quite per- 
mitted—no better than it had been! 

“And, as a matter of fact, though we had buried 
Byelinkoff, how many more people in cases there were 
left! How many more there will be!” 

“Yes, so, so, quite right,” said Ivan Ivanitch smok- 
ing his pipe. 

“How many more there will be!”’ Burkin repeated. 

The schoolmaster stepped out of the shed. He was 
a small man, fat, quite bald, with a black beard that 
reached almost to his waist; two dogs followed him 
out. 

“What a moon! What a moon!” he exclaimed look- 
ing up. | 

It was already midnight. To the right the whole 


THE MAN IN A CASE 95 


village lay visible, its long street stretching away for 
three or four miles. Everything was wrapped in deep, 
peaceful slumber; not a movement, not a sound; it 
did not seem possible that nature could lie so silent. 
Peace fills the soul when one sees the broad street of a 
village on a moonlight night with its huts and its 
haystacks and its dreaming willows. It looks so 
gentle and beautiful and sad in its rest, screened by 
the shades of night from care and grief and toil. The 
stars, too, seem to be gazing at it with tenderness and 
emotion, and one feels that there is no evil in the world 
and that all is well. To the left the fields began at 
the edge of the village and were visible for miles down 
to the horizon; in all this broad expanse there was also 
neither movement nor sound. 

“Yes, so, so, quite right,” Ivan Ivanitch repeated. 
“But think how we live in town, so hot and cramped, 
writing unnecessary papers and playing vint—isn’t 
that also a case? And isn’t our whole life, which we 
spend among rogues and backbiters and stupid, idle 
women, talking and listening to nothing but folly— 
isn’t that a case? Here! If you like I'll tell you a 
very instructive story.” 

“No, it’s time to go to sleep,” Burkin said. “To- 
morrow!” 

Both men went into the shed and lay down on the 
hay. They had already covered themselves up and 
were half asleep when they suddenly heard light foot- 
steps approaching—tip—tip. Somebody was walking 


96 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


by the shed. The footsteps went on and stopped, 
and in a minute came back again—tip—tip. The 
dogs growled. : 

“That was Mavra,” said Burkin as the sound died 
away. 

“One hears and sees all this lying,” said Ivan Ivan- 
itch, turning over on the other side. “Nobody calls 
one a fool for standing it all, for enduring insults and 
humiliations without daring to declare oneself openly 
on the side of free and honest people. One has to lie 
oneself and smile, all for a crust of bread, a corner to 
live in, and a little rank, which is not worth a penny— 
no, a man can’t go on living like this.” 

“Oh, come, that’s out of another opera, Ivan Ivan- 
itch,” said the schoolmaster. “Let’s go to sleep!” 

And ten minutes later Burkin was already asleep. 
But Ivan Ivanitch, sighing, still tossed from side to 
side, and at last got up and went out again and sat 
in the doorway smoking his pipe. 


Sf 


LITTLE JACK | 


ACK JUKOFF was a little boy of nine who, three 

-months ago, had been apprenticed to Aliakin, the 
shoemaker. On Christmas eve he did not go to bed. 
He waited until his master and the foreman had gone 
out to church, and then fetched a bottle of ink and a 
rusty pen from his master’s cupboard, spread out a 
crumpled sheet of paper before him, and began to 
write. Before he had formed the first letter he had 
more than once looked fearfully round at the door, 
glanced at the icon, on each side of which were ranged 
shelves laden with boot-lasts, and sighed deeply. The 
paper lay spread on the bench, and before it knelt 
Little Jack. 

“Dear grandpapa, Constantine Makaritch,” he 
wrote, “I am writing you a letter. I wish you a 
merry Christmas and I hope God will give you all sorts 
of good things. I have no papa or mamma, and you 
are all I have.” 

Little Jack turned his eyes to the dark window, on 
which shone the reflection of the candle, and vividly 
pictured to himself his grandfather, Constantine Ma- 
karitch: a small, thin, but extraordinarily active old 
man of sixty-five, with bleary eyes and a perpetually 

97 


98 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


smiling face; by day sleeping in the kitchen or teasing 
the cook; by night, muffled in a huge sheepskin coat, 
walking about the garden beating his watchman’s 
rattle. Behind him, hanging their heads, pace the 
dogs Kashtanka and The Eel, so called because he is 
_ black and his body is long like a weasel’s. This Eel 
is uncommonly respectful and affectionate; he gazes 
with impartial fondness upon strangers and friends 
alike; but his credit, in spite of this, is bad. Beneath 
the disguise of a humble and deferential manner he 
conceals the most jesuitical perfidy. Nobody knows 
better than he how to steal up and grab you by the 
leg, how to make his way into the ice-house, or filch 
a hen from a peasant. His hind legs have been broken 
more than once; twice he has been hung, and every 
week he is thrashed within an inch of his life; but he 
always recovers. 

At this moment, no doubt, grandfather is standing 
at the gate blinking at the glowing red windows of the 
village church, stamping his felt boots, and teasing 
the servants. His rattle hangs at his belt. He beats 
his arms and hugs himself with cold, and, giggling after 
the manner of old men, pinches first the maid, then 
the cook. 

“Let’s have some snuff!” he says, handing the women 
his snuff-box. 

The women take snuff and sneeze. Grandfather 
goes off into indescribable ecstasies, breaks into shouts 
of laughter, and cries: 


LITTLE JACK 99 


1? 
. 


“Wipe it off! It’s freezing on 

Then they give the dogs snuff. Kashtanka sneezes 
and wrinkles her nose; her feelings are hurt, and she 
walks away. The Eel refrains from sneezing out of 
respect and wags his tail. The weather is glorious. 
The night is dark, but the whole village is visible; the 
white roofs, the columns of smoke rising from the 
chimneys, the trees, silvery with frost, and the snow- 
drifts. The sky is strewn with gaily twinkling stars, 
and the milky way is as bright as if it had been washed 
and scrubbed with snow for the holiday. 

Little Jack sighed, dipped his pen in the ink, and 
went on: 

“T had a dragging yesterday. My master dragged 
me into the yard by my hair and beat me with a 
stirrup because I went to sleep without meaning to 
while I was rocking the baby. Last week my mistress 
told me to clean some herrings, and I began cleaning 
one from the tail, and she took it and poked its head 
into my face. The foreman laughs at me and sends 
me for vodka, makes me steal the cucumbers, and then 
my master beats me with whatever comes handy. 
And I have nothing to eat. I get bread in the morning, 
and porridge for dinner, and bread for supper. My 
master and mistress drink up all the tea and the soup. 
And they make me sleep in the hall, and when the baby 
cries I don’t sleep at all because I have to rock the 
cradle. Dear grandpa, please take me away from here, 
home to the village. I can’t stand it. I beg you on 


100 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 
my knees; I will pray to God for you all my life. Take 


me away from here, or else I shall die——”’ 

Little Jack’s mouth twisted; he rubbed his eyes with 
a grimy fist and sobbed. __ 

“TI will grind your tobacco for you,” he continued, 
‘and pray to God for you; and if I don’t you can kill 
me like Sidoroff’s goat. And if you think I ought to 
work I can ask the steward please to let me clean the 
boots, or I can do the ploughing in place of Teddy. 
Dear grandpa, I can’t stand it; I shall die. I wanted 
to run away to the village on foot, but I haven’t any 
boots, and it is so cold. And when [ am big I will 
always take care of you and not allow any one to hurt 
you at all, and when you die I will pray to God for 
you as I do for my mother Pelagea. 

“Moscow is a big city. All the houses are manor 
houses, and there are lots of horses, but no sheep, and 
the dogs are not fierce. The children don’t carry stars,* 
~ and they don’t let any one sing in church, and in one 
store I saw in the window how they were selling fish- 
hooks with the lines on them, and there was a fish on 
every hook, and the hooks were very large and one 
held a sturgeon that weighed forty pounds. I saw a 
store where they sell all kinds of guns just like our 
master’s guns; some cost a hundred roubles. But at 
the butcher’s there are grouse and partridges and hares; 
but the butcher won’t tell where they were killed. 

“Dear grandpa, when they have the Christmas tree 


* A Russian peasant custom at Christmas time. 


ee a a oe ee Te 


LITTLE JACK 101 


at the big house, keep some gold nuts for me and put 
them away in the green chest. Ask Miss Olga for 
them and say they are for Little Jack.” 

Little Jack heaved a shuddering sigh and stared at the 
window again. He remembered how his grandfather 
used to go to the forest for the Christmas tree, and 
take his grandchild with him. Those were jolly days. 
Grandfather wheezed and grunted, and the snow 
wheezed and grunted, and Little Jack wheezed and 
grunted in sympathy. Before cutting down the tree 
grandfather would finish smoking his pipe and slowly 
take snuff, laughing all the time at little, shivering 
Jacky. The young fir-trees, muffled in snow, stood 
immovable and wondered: “Which of us is going to 
die?” Hares flew like arrows across the snow, and 
grandfather could never help crying: “Hold on! Hold 
on! Hold on! Oh, the bobtailed devil!” 

Then grandfather would drag the fallen fir-tree up 
to the big house, and there they would all set to work 
trimming it. The busiest of all was Miss Olga, Jack’s 
favourite. While Jack’s mother, Pelagea, was still 
alive and a housemaid at the big house Miss Olga used 
to give Little Jack candy, and because she had nothing 
better to do had taught him to read and write and to 
count up to a hundred, and even to dance the quadrille. 

When Pelagea died the little orphan was banished 
to the kitchen, where his grandfather was, and from 
there he was sent to Moscow, to Aliakin, the shoe- 
maker. 


102 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“Do come, dear grandpapa,” Little Jack went on. 
“‘Please come; I beg you for Christ’s sake to come and 
take me away. Have pity on your poor little orphan, 
because every one scolds me, and I’m so hungry, and 
it’s so lonely—I can’t tell you how lonely it is. I cry all 
day long. And the other day my master hit me on 
the head with a boot-tree, so that I fell down and al- 
most didn’t come to again. And give my love to 
Nelly and one-eyed Gregory and to the coachman, 
and don’t let any one use my accordion. 

“Your grandson, 
“JouHN JUKOFF. 

‘Dear grandpapa, do come.” | 


Little Jack folded the paper in four and put it in an 
envelope which he had bought that evening for one 
copeck. He reflected an instant, then dipped his pen 
in the ink and wrote the address: 


“To my Grandpapa in the Village.” 


Then he scratched his head, thought a moment, and 
added: 
**Constantine Makaritch.” 


Delighted to have finished his letter without in- 
terruption, he put on his cap and, without waiting to 
throw his little overcoat over his shoulders, ran out 
into the street in his shirt. 


LITTLE JACK 103 


The butcher, whom he had asked the evening before, 
had told him that one drops letters into the mail-boxes, 
and that from there they are carried all over the world 
in mail wagons with ringing bells, driven by drivers 
who are drunk. Little Jack ran to the nearest mail- 
box and dropped his letter in the opening. 

An hour later he was sound asleep, lulled by the 
sweetest hopes. He dreamed he saw a stove. On the 
stove sat his grandfather swinging his bare legs and 
reading his letter to the cook. Near the stove walked 
The Eel, wagging his tail. 


DREAMS 


WO soldiers are escorting to the county town a 
vagrant who does not remember who he is. One 
of them is black-bearded and thick-set, with legs so 
uncommonly short that, seen from behind, they seem 
to begin much lower down than those of other men; 
the other is long, lank, spare, and straight as a stick, 
with a thin beard of a dark-reddish hue. The first 
waddles along, looking from side to side and sucking 
now a straw and now the sleeve of his coat. He slaps 
his thigh and hums to himself, and looks, on the whole, 
light-hearted and care-free. The other, with his lean 
face and narrow shoulders, is staid and important- 
looking; in build and in the expression of his whole per- 
son he resembles a priest of the Starover Faith or one of 
those warriors depicted on antique icons. “For his 
wisdom God has enlarged his brow,” that is to say, he 
is bald, which still more enhances the resemblance. 
The first soldier is called Andrew Ptaka, the second 
Nikander Sapojnikoff. 
The man they are escorting is not in the least like 
what every one imagines a tramp should be. He is 
small and sickly and feeble, with little, colourless, ab- 


solutely undefined features. His eyebrows are thin, 
104 


MG DREAMS 105 


his glance is humble and mild, and his whiskers have 
barely made their appearance though he is already 
past thirty. He steps timidly along, stooping, With 
his hands thrust into his sleeves. The collar 6f his 
threadbare, unpeasant-like little coat is turned right 
up to the brim of his cap, so that all that can venture 
to peep out at the world is his little red nose. When he 
speaks, it is in a high, obsequious little voice, and then 
he immediately coughs. It is hard, very hard to 
recognise in him a vagabond who is hiding his name. 
He looks more like some impoverished, God-forsaken 
son of a priest, or a clerk discharged for intemperance, 
or a merchant’s son who has essayed his puny strength 
on the stage and is now returning to his home to play 
out the last act of the parable of the prodigal son. 
Perhaps, judging from the dull patience with which 
he battles with the clinging autumn mud, he is a 
fanatic; some youth trained for a monk who is wan- 
dering from one monastery to another all over Russia, 
doggedly seeking “a life of peace and freedom from 
sin,”’ which he cannot find. 

The wayfarers have been walking a long time, but 
for all their efforts they cannot get away from the 
same spot of ground. Before them lie ten yards of 
dark-brown, muddy road, behind them lies as much; 
beyond that, wherever they turn, rises a dense wall of 
white fog. They walk and walk, but the ground they 
walk on is always the same; the wall comes no nearer; 
the spot remains a spot. Now and then they catch 


106 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


glimpses of white, irregular cobblestones, a dip in the 
road, or an armful of hay dropped by some passing 
wagon; a large pool of muddy water gleams for a 
moment, or a shadow, vaguely outlined, suddenly and 
unexpectedly appears before them. The nearer they 
come to this, the smaller and darker it grows; they come 
nearer still, and before them rises a crooked mile-post 
with its numbers effaced, or a woebegone birch-tree, 
naked and wet, like a wayside beggar. The birch-tree 
is whispering something with the remains of its yellow 
foliage; one leaf breaks off and flutters sluggishly to 
the ground, and then again there come fog and mud 
and the brown grass by the roadside. Dim, evil tears 
hang on these blades—not the tears of quiet joy that 
the earth weeps when she meets and accompanies the 
summer sun, and with which at dawn she quenches 
the thirst of quail and rails and graceful, long-billed 
snipe! The feet of the travellers are caught by the 
thick, sticky mud; every step costs them an effort. 

Andrew Ptaka is a trifle provoked. He is scruti- 
nising the vagrant and trying to understand how a 
live, sober man could forget his name. 

“You belong to the Orthodox Church, don’t you?” 
he asks. 

“TI do,” answers the tramp briefly. 

**H’m—have you been christened?” 

“Of course I have; I’m not a Turk! I go to church 
and observe the fasts and don’t eat flesh when it’s for- 
bidden to do so——” 


DREAMS 107 


“Well, then, what name shall I call you by?” 

“Call me what you please, lad.” 

Ptaka shrugs his shoulders and slaps his thigh in 
extreme perplexity. The other soldier, Nikander, pre- 
serves a sedate silence. He is not so simple as Ptaka, 
and evidently knows very well reasons which might 
induce a member of the Orthodox Church to conceal 
his identity. His expressive face is stern and cold. 
He walks apart and disdains idle gossip with his com- 
panions. He seems to be endeavouring to show to 
every one and everything, even to the mist, how grave 
and sensible he is. 

“The Lord only knows what to think about you!” 
pursues Ptaka. “Are you a peasant or not? Are 
you a gentleman or not? Or are you something be- 
tween the two? I was rinsing out a sieve in a pond 
one day and caught a little monster as long as my 
finger here, with gills and a tail. Thinks I—it’s a fish! 
Then I take another look at it—and Ill be blessed if it 
didn’t have feet! It wasn’t a fish and it wasn’t a 
reptile—the devil only knows what it was! That’s 
just what you are. What class do you belong to?” 

“T am a peasant by birth,” sighs the tramp. “My 
mother was a house serf. In looks I’m not a peasant, 
and that is because fate has willed it so, good man. 
My mother was a nurse in a gentleman’s house and 
had every pleasure the heart could desire, and I, as 
her flesh and blood, belonged, in her lifetime, to the 
household. They petted me and spoiled me and beat 


108 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


me till they beat me from common to well-bred. I 
slept in a bed, had a real dinner every day, and wore 
trousers and low shoes like any little noble. What- 
ever my mother had to eat, I had. They gave her 
dresses and dressed me, too. Oh, we lived well! The 
candy and cake I ate in my childhood would buy a 
good horse now if I could sell them! My mother 
taught me to read and write, and from the time I was 
a baby instilled the fear of God into me and trained me 
so well that to this day I couldn’t use an impolite, 
peasant word. I don’t drink vodka, boy, and I dress 
cleanly and can make a respectable appearance in good 
society. God give her health if she is still alive; if 
she is dead, take her soul, O Lord, to rest in thy 
heavenly kingdom where the blessed find peace!” 

The tramp uncovers his head, with its sparse bristles, 
casts his eyes upward, and makes the sign of the cross 
twice. 

“Give her peace, O Lord, in green places!” he says 
in a drawling voice, more like an old woman’s than a 
man’s. “Keep thy slave Kcenia in all thy ways, O° 
Lord! If it had not been for my good mother I 
should have been a simple peasant now, not knowing a 
thing. As it is, lad, ask me what you please; I know 
everything: the Holy Scriptures, all godly things, all 
the prayers, and the Catechisms. I live according to 
the Scriptures; I do wrong to no one; I keep my body 
pure; I observe the fasts and eat as it is ordered. 
Some men find pleasure only in vodka and brawling. 


33 
! 


DREAMS 109 


but when I have time I sit in a corner and read a book, 
and as I read I cry and cry——” 

“Why do you cry?” 

“Because the things they tell of are so pitiful. Some- 
times you pay only five copecks for a book and weep 
and wail over it to despair——” 

“Ts your father dead?” asks Ptaka. 

“T don’t know, lad. It’s no use hiding a sin; I don’t 
know who my father was. What I think is that I 
was an illegitimate son of my mother’s. My mother 
lived all her life with the gentry and never would 
marry a common peasant.” 

“So she flew higher, up to his master!” laughs 
Ptaka. 

“That is so. My mother was pious and godly, and 
of course it is a sin, a great sin, to say so, but, never- 
theless, maybe I have noble blood in my veins. Maybe 
I am a peasant in station only and am really a high- 
born gentleman.” 

The “high-born gentleman” utters all this in a 
soft, sickly sweet voice, wrinkling his narrow brows 
and emitting squeaky noises from his cold, red, little 
nose. 

Ptaka listens to him, eyes him with astonishment, 
and still shrugs his shoulders. 

After going four miles the soldiers and the tramp 
sit down on a little knoll to rest. 

“Even a dog can remember his name,” mutters 


Ptaka. “I am called Andrew and he is called Ni- 


110 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


kander; every man has his God-given name and no 
one could possibly forget it—not possibly!” 

“Whose business is it of any one’s to know who I 
am?” sighs the tramp, leaning his cheek on his hand. 
“And what good would it do me if they knew? If I 
were allowed to go wherever I liked I should be worse 
off than I am now. I know the law, my Christian 
friends—now I am a vagrant who does not remember 
his name, and the worst they could do to me would 
be to send me to eastern Siberia with thirty or forty 
lashes, but if I should tell them my real name and 
station I should be sent to hard labour again—I 
know!” 

“You mean to say you have been a convict?” 

“I have, my good friend. My head was shaved and 
I wore chains for four years.” 

“What for?” 

“For murder, good man. When I was still a boy, 
about eighteen years old, my mother put arsenic into 
our master’s glass by mistake instead of soda. There 
were a great many different little boxes in the store- 
room and it was not hard to mistake them.” 

_ The tramp sighs, shakes his head, and continues: 

“She was a godly woman, but who can say? The 
soul of another is a dark forest. Maybe she did it by 
mistake. Maybe it was because her master had at- 
tached another servant to himself and her heart could 
not forgive the insult. Perhaps she did put it in on 
purpose—God only knows! I was young then and 


DREAMS 111 


couldn’t understand everything. I remember now that 
our master did, in fact, take another mistress at that 
time and that my mother was deeply hurt. Our trial 
went on for two years after that. My mother was 
condemned to twenty years’ penal servitude and I to 
seven on account of my youth.” 

““And what charge were you convicted on?” 

“For being an accomplice. I handed our master 
the glass. It was always that way: my mother-would 
prepare the soda and I would hand him the glass. 
But I am confessing all this before you, brothers, as 
before God. You won’t tell any one——” 

“No one will ever ask us,” says Ptaka. “So that 
means you ran away from prison, does it?” 

“Yes, I ran away, good friend. Fourteen of us es- 
caped. God be with them! They ran away and took 
me along, too. Now judge for yourself, lad, and tell 
me honestly whether I have any reason for telling my 
name? [I should be condemned to penal servitude 
again; and what sort of a convict am I? I am delicate 
and sickly; I like cleanliness in my food and in the 
places where I sleep. When I pray to God I like to 
have a little shrine lamp or a candle burning, and I 
don’t like to have noises going on round me when I’m | 
praying. When I prostrate myself I don’t like to 
have the floor all filthy and spat over, and I prostrate 
myself forty times morning and night for my mother’s 
” salvation.” 

The tramp takes off his cap and crosses himself. 


112 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“But let them send me to eastern Siberia if they 
want to!” he cries. “I’m not afraid of that.” 

“What? Is that better?” 

“It is an ‘entirely different affair. At hard labour 
you are no better off than a crab in a basket. You are 
crowded and pushed and hustled; there’s not a quiet 
corner to take ‘breath; it’s a hell on earth—the Mother 
of God forbid it! A ruffian you are, and a ruffian’s 
treatment you receive—worse than any dog’s. You get 
nothing to eat; there is nowhere to sleep and nowhere 
_ to say your prayers. In exile it’s different. You first 
enrol yourself in the company, as every one else does. 
The government is compelled by law to give you 
your share of land. Yes, indeed! Land, they say, 
is cheap there, as cheap as snow. You can take all 
you want! They would give me land for farming, lad, 
and land for a garden, and land for a house. Then I 
would plough and sow, as other men do, raise cattle 
and bees and sheep and dogs—I’d get myself a Siberian 
cat to keep the rats and mice from eating my property, 
I'd build me a house, brothers, and buy icons; and, 
God willing, I’d marry and have children és 

The tramp is murmuring to himself now and has — 
ceased looking at his listeners; he is gazing off some- 
where to one side. Artless as his reveries are, he speaks 
with such sincerity and such heartfelt earnestness that 
it is hard not to believe what he says. The little 
mouth of the vagrant is twisted by a smile, and his 
whole face, his eyes, and his nose are numbed and 


DREAMS 113 


paralysed by the foretaste of far-off happiness. The 
soldiers listen and regard him earnestly, not without 
compassion. They also believe what he says. 

“T am not afraid of Siberia,” the tramp murmurs on. 
‘Siberia and Russia are the same thing. They have 
the same God there as here, and the same Czar, and 
they speak the language of Orthodox Christians, as I 
am speaking with you; only there is greater plenty, and 
the people are richer. Everything is better there. 
Take, for example, the rivers. They are a thousand 
times finer than ours. And fish! The fishing in them 
is simply beyond words! Fishing, brothers, is the 
greatest joy of my life. I don’t ask for bread; only let 
me sit and hold a fishing-line! Indeed, that is true! 
I catch fish on a hook and line and in pots and with 
bow nets, and when the ice comes I use cast nets. I 
am not strong enough to fish with a cast net myself; 
so I have to hire a peasant for five copecks to do that 
for me. Heavens, what fun it is! It’s like seeing 
your own brother again to catch an eel or a mudfish! 
And you have to treat every fish differently, I can tell 
you. You use a minnow for one, and a worm for an- 
other, and a frog or a grasshopper for a third; you’ve 
got to know all that. Take, for example, the eel. The 
eel isn’t a dainty fish; it will take even a newt. Pikes 
like earthworms—garfish, butterflies. There is no 
greater joy on earth than fishing for chubs in swift 
water. You bait your hook with a butterfly or a 
beetle, so that it will float on the surface; and you let 


114 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


your line run out some twenty or thirty yards without 
a sinker; then you stand in the water without your 
trousers and let the bait float down with the current 
till—tug! and there’s a chub on the hook! Then you 
have to watch ever so closely for just the right moment 
to hook it or the confounded thing will go off with 
your bait. ‘The moment it twitches the line you’ve 
got to pull; there isn’t a second to lose! The number 
of fish I have caught in my life is a caution! When we 
were escaping and the other convicts were asleep in 
the forest, I couldn’t sleep and would go off in search 
of a river. The rivers there are so wide and swift 
and steep-banked—it’s a caution. And all along their 
shores lie dense forests. The trees are so high that it 
makes your head swim to look up to the top of them. 
According to prices here every one of those pine-trees 
is worth ten roubles cy 

Under the confused stress of his imagination, the 
dream pictures of the past, and the sweet foretaste of 
happiness, the piteous little man stops speaking and 
only moves his lips as if whispering to himself. The 
feeble, beatific smile does not leave his face. The sol- 
diers say nothing. Their heads have sunk forward 
onto their breasts, and they are lost in meditation. 
In the autumn silence, when a chill, harsh fog from the 
earth settles on the soul and rises like a prison wall 
before one to testify to the narrow limits of man’s 
freedom, ah! then it is sweet to dream of wide, swift 
rivers with bold, fertile banks, of dense forests, of 


DREAMS 115 


boundless plains! Idly, peacefully, the fancy pictures 
to itself a man, a tiny speck, appearing on the steep, un- 
inhabited bank of a river in the early morning, before 
the flush of dawn has faded from the sky. The sum- 
mits of the everlasting pines rise piled high in terraces 
on either side of the stream and, muttering darkly, 
look sternly at that free man. Roots, great rocks, 
and thorny bushes obstruct his path, but he is strong 
of body and valiant of heart and fears neither the 
pines nor the rocks nor the solitude nor the rolling 
echoes that reiterate every footfall.. 

The imagination of the soldiers is painting for them 
pictures of a free life which they have never lived. Is 
it that they darkly recall images of things heard long 
ago? Or have these visions of a life of liberty come 
down to them with their flesh and blood as an inheri- 
tance from their remote, wild ancestors? God only 
knows! 

The first to break the silence is Nikander, who un- 
til now has not let fall a word. Perhaps he is jealous 
of the vagrant’s visionary happiness; perhaps he 
feels in his heart that dreams of bliss are incongruous 
amidst surroundings of grey mist and brown-black 
mud—at any rate, he looks sternly at the tramp and 
says: 

“That is all very well, brother; that is all very fine, 
but you'll never reach that land of plenty! How could 
you? You would go thirty miles and then give up the 
ghost—a little half-dead creature like you! You've 


116 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


only walked four miles to-day and yet, look at you! 
You can’t seem to get rested at all!” 

The tramp turns slowly to Nikander and the blissful 
smile fades from his face. He looks with dismay at the 
grave countenance of the soldier as if he had been 
caught doing wrong and seems to have recollected 
something, for he nods his head. Silence falls once 
more. All three are busy with their own thoughts. 
The soldiers are trying to force their minds to grasp 
what perhaps God alone can conceive of: the terrible ° 
expanse that lies between them and that land of free- 
dom. Images more clear, precise, and terrifying are 
crowding into the vagrant’s head—courts of justice, 
dungeons for exiles and for convicts, prison barracks, 
weary halts along the road, the cold of winter, illness, 
the death of his companions—all rise vividly before 
him. 

The tramp blinks, and little drops stand out upon 
his brow. He wipes his forehead with his sleeve, draws 
' a deep breath as if he had just jumped out of a hot oven, 
wipes his forehead with the other sleeve, and glances 
fearfully behind him. 

“It is quite true that you could never get there,” 
Ptaka assents. ‘You’re not a walker! Look at your- 
self—all skin and bone! It would kill you, brother.” 

“Of course it would kill him; he couldn’t possibly 
do it,” declares Nikander. “He'll be sent straight to 
the hospital, anyway, as it is. That’s a fact!” 

The nameless wanderer looks with terror at the 


DREAMS 117 


stern, impassive faces of his evil-boding fellow trav- 
ellers; then, lowering his eyes, he rapidly crosses him- 
self without taking off his cap. He is trembling all 
over, his head is shaking, and he is beginning to 
writhe like a caterpillar that some one has stepped on. 

“Come on! Time to go!” cries Nikander, rising. 
“We have rested long enough!” 

Another minute and the travellers are plodding 
along the muddy road. The tramp is stooping more 
than before and has thrust his hands still deeper into 
the sleeves of his coat. Ptaka is silent. 


THE DEATH OF AN OFFICIAL 


NE beautiful evening the not less beautiful minor 
government official Ivan Tcherviakoff was sit- 

ting in the second row of the orchestra looking through 
his opera-glasses at “‘Les Cloches de Corneville.” As 
he sat there he felt himself to be in the seventh heaven 
of happiness. But suddenly (in stories one often finds 
this “suddenly”; authors are right—life is full of the 
unexpected), suddenly his face grew wrinkled, his eyes 
rolled, and he held his breath—he took down his opera- 
glasses, bent forward, and—ha-choo! He sneezed, as 
you see. Sneezing is not prohibited to any one any- 
where. Peasants sneeze, and chiefs of police sneeze, 
and even privy councilors sneeze sometimes; every 
one sneezes. Tcherviakoff was in nowise embarrassed; 
he wiped his nose with his handkerchief and glanced 
about him politely to make sure that he had not dis- 
turbed any one by his sneezing. And then he felt him- 
self perforce abashed. He saw that an old man who 
was sitting in front of him in the first row was pain- 
fully wiping his bald spot and the back of his neck 
with his glove and muttering something. In this old 
man Tcherviakoff recognised General Brizjaloff of the 


Department of Highways. 
118 


THE DEATH OF AN OFFICIAL 119 


“T sneezed on him!” thought Tcherviakoff. “He 
is not my chief, but still it is awkward. I must apolo- 
gise.”” 

Tcherviakoff cleared his throat, shifted himself for- 
ward, and whispered in the general’s ear: 

“T beg your pardon, your Excellency; I sneezed on 
you. I accidentally . 

“Never mind, never mind——’ 

“For Heaven’s sake, excuse me. I—I didn’t mean 
{ 33 

“Oh, sit down, please! Let me listen to what is 
being said.” 

Tcherviakoff was overwhelmed with confusion. He 
smiled idiotically and began looking at the stage. He 
looked at it but no longer felt any sensation of bliss. 
Anxiety was beginning to torment him. During the 
next entr’acte he approached Brizjaloff, walked along 
at his side, and, conquering his timidity, murmured: 

“I sneezed on your Excellency. Excuse me. You 
see, I—did not do it to——” 

“Oh, enough of that! I had already forgotten it, 
and you keep on at the same thing!” the general said, 
impatiently twitching his lower lip. 

“He says he has forgotten it, but there is malice in 
his eye,” thought Tcherviakoff, glancing at the general 
mistrustfully. ‘“‘He won’t even speak. I must explain 
that I didn’t mean to—that sneezing is a law of nature 
—or else he might think I was spitting. If he doesn’t 
think so now he will later.” 


120 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


On reaching his home Tcherviakoff told his wife of 
his rudeness. He thought she regarded what had hap- 
pened too flippantly. She was only alarmed at first; 
when she learned that Brizjaloff was not their chief 
she felt reassured. 

“Still, you must go and apologise,” she said. “He 
might think you didn’t know how to behave in society.” 

“That’s just it! I have apologised, but he acted so 
curiously; he didn’t say anything sensible. But, then, 
there was no time for conversation.” 

Next day Tcherviakoff shaved, donned his new un- 
dress uniform, and went to explain things to Brizjaloff. 
As he entered the general’s reception-room his eye 
fell on a great crowd of petitioners assembled there, 
and in their midst was the general, who had already 
begun his reception. Having interrogated several of 
the petitioners, the general raised his eyes to Tcher- 
viakoff. 

“Yesterday, at the ‘Arcadian,’ if you remember, 
your Excellency—”’ the little official began, “I sneezed 
and—accidentally spattered you. Excu i 

“What nonsense! Rot! What can I do for you?” 

“He won’t speak to me!” thought Tcherviakoff, 
turning pale. “He is angry; I must explain to 
him——”’ . 

When the general had finished his interview with 
the last petitioner and was going into an inner apart- 
ment, Tcherviakoff stepped up to him and murmured: 

“Your Excellency! If I dare to trouble your Ex- 


THE DEATH OF AN OFFICIAL 121 


cellency, it is only, I can assure you, from a feeling of 
repentance. I did not do it on purpose. Your Ex- 
cellency must know that fj 

The general made a tearful face and waved his hand. 

“You are simply joking, sir!” he said disappearing 
behind the door. 

“He says I am joking!” thought Tcherviakoff. “But 
there is no joke about this at all. He is a general and 
he can’t see that! As that is the case, I'll not beg 
that swashbuckler’s pardon again, confound him! I'll 
write him a letter, but I'll not come here again; I'll be 
hanged if I will!” 

Thus Tcherviakoff reflected walking homeward. He 
did not write that letter to the general. He thought 
and thought and couldn’t for the life of him think of 
anything to write. He had to go next day himself and 
explain. 

“T came yesterday and troubled your Excellency,” 
he mumbled, as the general looked at him interroga- 
tively, “but not with the idea of joking, as your Ex- 
cellency was good enough to remark. I wanted to beg 
your pardon because in sneezing I—I did not dream of 
joking. How could I dare to? To joke would be to 
show no respect for persons—it would y 

“Get out!” roared the general, suddenly quaking 
and growing purple in the face. 

“Er—what?” whispered Tcherviakoff, swooning 
with horror. 

“Get out!” repeated the general, stamping. 


122 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


Something seemed to break in Tcherviakoff’s breast. 
He stumbled through the door and out into the street, 
not seeing or hearing a thing, and crawled along the 
sidewalk. Going home mechanically, he lay down on a 
sofa, without taking off his undress uniform, and—died. 


AGATHA 


URING my stay in the province of S——— I 
spent much of my time in the company of Sava 
Stukatch, or Savka for short, the watchman of the com- 
munal vegetable gardens of the village of Dubofka. 
These gardens on the bank of the river were my fa- 
vourite resort for what may be called fishing “in gen- 
eral”’—when you leave home without knowing the hour 
or day of your return and take with you a supply of 
provisions and every conceivable article of fishing- 
tackle. To tell the truth, I cared less for the fishing 
than I did for the peaceful idling, the chatting with 
Savka, the eating at all hours, and the long watches in 
the quiet summer nights. 

Savka was a young fellow of twenty-five, tall, hand- 
some, and hard as a brick. He had a reputation for 
cleverness and good sense, could read and write, and 
seldom drank vodka; but, powerful and young as he 
was, as a workman he was not worth one copper copeck. 
Though as tough as whipcord, his strong muscles were 
impregnated with a heavy, invincible indolence. Like 
every one else in the village, he had formerly lived in a 
hut of his own and had had his own share of the land, 
but he had neither ploughed nor sowed nor followed 
any trade. His old mother had gone begging from door 

123 


124 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


to door while he lived like the birds of the air, not 
knowing in the morning what he would eat at noon. 
It was not will, nor energy, nor pity for his mother 
that were lacking; he simply felt no inclination for toil 
and did not see the necessity for it. A sense of peace 
and an inborn, almost artistic, passion for an idle, dis- 
orderly life emanated from his whole being. When 
his healthy young body craved muscular exercise the 
lad would abandon himself completely for a short time 
to some untrammelled but absurd occupation such as 
sharpening a lot of useless stakes or running races with 
the women. His favourite state was one of concen- 
trated immobility. He was capable of remaining for 
hours in one place, motionless, and with his eyes fixed 
on the same spot. He moved when the fancy seized 
him, and then only when he saw a chance for some 
swift, impetuous action such as catching a running 
dog by the tail, snatching the kerchief from the head 
of a woman, or leaping across a broad ditch. 

It follows that, being so stingy of movement, Savka 
was as poor as Job’s turkey and lived worse than a 
vagabond. As time went on his arrears had accumu- 
lated and, young and strong as he was, he had been 
sent by the commune to take an old man’s place as 
watchman and scarecrow in the village communal gar- 
dens. He did not care a snap of his finger how much 
he was laughed at for his untimely old age. This oc- 
cupation, so quiet and so well adapted for motionless 
contemplation, exactly suited his tastes. 


AGATHA 125 


I happened to be visiting Savka one beautiful eve- 
ning in May. I lay, I remember, on a worn, tattered 
rug near a shed from which came the thick, choking 
smell of dried grass. With my hands behind my head 
I lay staring before me. At my feet was a wooden 
pitchfork; beyond that a dark object stood out sharply 
—it was Savka’s little dog Kutka—and not more than 
fifteen feet beyond Kutka the ground fell away ab- 
ruptly to the steep bank of the river. I could not see 
the water from where I lay, only the tops of the bushes 
crowding along the bank and the jagged and winding 
contours of the opposite shore. Beyond the river, on 
a dark hill, the huts of the village where my Savka had 
lived lay huddled together like startled young par- 
tridges. The evening light was fading behind the hill, 
only a pale strip of crimson remained, and across this 
little clouds were gathering as ashes gather on dying 
embers. 

To the right of the garden lay a dark alder wood 
whispering softly and shivering sometimes as a sudden 
breeze wandered by. A bright little fire was twinkling 
in the dusk, there, where the eye could no longer dis- 
tinguish the fields from the sky. At a short distance 
from me sat Savka, cross-legged, his head bowed, 
thoughtfully gazing at Kutka. Our hooks had long 
since been baited and dropped into the stream, and 
there was nothing for us to do but surrender ourselves 
to the repose so much loved by the never-weary but 
eternally resting Savka. Though the sunset had not 


126 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


faded entirely the summer night had folded the world 
in its soothing, sleep-giving embrace. 

Nature had sunk into her first profound slumber; 
only in the wood some night-bird unknown to me 
uttered a slow, lazy cry which sounded like, “Is that 
Ni-ki-ta?” and then answered himself: “Nikita! Ni- 
kita! Nikita!” 

““Why aren’t the nightingales singing this evening?” 
I asked. 

Savka turned slowly toward me. His features were 
large but well formed and expressive and gentle as a 
woman’s. He looked with kind, pensive eyes, first at 
the wood and then at the thicket, then quietly took 
out a little pipe from his pocket, put it to his lips, and 
blew a few notes like a hen nightingale. At once, as 
if answering his call, a rail-bird “chucked” from the 
opposite shore. 

“There goes a nightingale for you!”’ laughed Savka. 
*Chuck-chuck! chuck-chuck! as if it were jerking at a 
hook, and yet it thinks it is singing!” 

“I like those birds,” I said. “‘Do you know that 
when the time for migrating comes the rail doesn’t 
fly but runs along the ground? It only flies across 
rivers and the ocean and goes all thes rest of the way 
on foot.” 

“The little monkey!’’ murmured Savka, gazing with 
respect in the direction of the calling rail. 

Knowing how much Savka loved listening, I told 
him all I had learned about rails from my sportsman’s 


AGATHA 127 


books. From rails we slipped imperceptibly into mi- 
gration. Savka listened with rapt attention, not moy- 
ing an eyelash, smiling with pleasure. 

“In which country are the birds most at home, in 
ours or over there?” he asked. 

“In ours, of course. They are hatched here and here 
they raise their young. This is their native land, and 
they only fly away to escape being frozen to death.” 

“How strange!” Savka sighed, stretching. “One 
can’t talk of anything but what it is strange. Take 
that shouting bird over there, take people, take this 
little stone—there’s a meaning in everything. Oh, if 
I had only known you were going to be here this eve- 
ning, sir, I wouldn’t have told that woman to come! 
She asked if she might.” 

“Oh, you mustn’t mind me!” I said. “I shan’t in- 
terfere. I can go and lie in the wood.” ' 

“What an idea! It wouldn’t have killed her to wait 
till to-morrow. If she were sitting here now and lis- 
tening, we could do nothing but drivel. One can’t ™ 
talk sense when she is around.” 

“Are you expecting Daria?” 

“No, a new one asked to come here this evening; 
Agatha, the switéhman’s wife.” 

Savka uttered this in his usual impassive way, in a 
dull voice, as if he were speaking of tobacco or por- 
ridge, but I jumped with astonishment. I knew Agatha 
well. She was still very young, not more than nineteen 
or twenty, and less than a year ago had married a 


128 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


railway switchman—a fine, bold young peasant. She 
lived in the village, and her husband came home to her 
every night from the railway. 

“These affairs of yours with women will end badly 
some day,” I said sadly. 

“Never mind!” 

Then, after a moment’s reflection, Savka added: 

“So I have told the women, but they won’t tisten; 
the idiots don’t care.” 

Silence fell. The shadows deepened, the outlines of 
all objects faded into the darkness. The streak of 
light behind the hill was altogether extinguished, and 
the stars shone ever clearer and brighter. The mourn- 
ful, monotonous chirping of the crickets, the calling of 
the rail-bird, and the whistling of the quail seemed not 
to break the nocturnal silence but rather to add to it 
a still ter depth. It was as if the stars, and not 
the birds and insects, were singing softly and charming 
our ears as they looked down from heaven. 

Savka broke silence first. He slowly turned his re- 
gard from Kutka’s black form to me, and said: 

“This is tedious for you, sir, I can see. Let’s have 
supper.” 

Without waiting for my consent, he crawled on his 
stomach into the shed, rummaged about there until 
the whole building shook like a leaf, and crawled back 
with a bottle of vodka and an earthenware bowl, which 
he placed before me. In the bowl were baked eggs, 
fried cakes of rye flour, some pieces of black bread, and 


a Pe a eal cl a 


a Se ee 


1 ETSI NIN ORO 


ob 
2 
her 
hg 
me 
e 
A 


AGATHA 129 


a few other things. We each had a drink out of a 
crooked glass that refused to stand up, and began our 
meal. Oh, that coarse, grey salt, those dirty, greasy 
cakes, those eggs as tough as India-rubber, how good 
they all tasted! 

“You live the life of a tramp, and yet you have all 
these good things!” I exclaimed, pointing to the bowl. 
“Where do you get them?” 

“The women bring them,” grunted Savka. 

«< Why?” 

“Oh, out of pity.” 

Not only the bill of fare but Savka’s clothes, too, 
bore traces of feminine “pity.” I noticed that he wore 
a new worsted girdle that evening and that a little 
copper cross was suspended round his grimy neck by a 
bright crimson ribbon. I knew the weakness of the 
fair sex for Savka, and I knew, too, how unwilling he 
was to speak of it, so I did not pursue the subject. 
Besides, I had no time to say more. Kutka, who had 
been sitting near by in patient expectation of scraps, 
suddenly pricked up his ears and growled. We heard 
an intermittent splashing of water. 

“Some one is crossing the ford,” said Savka. 

In a few minutes Kutka growled again and emitted 
a sound like a cough. 

“Here!” cried his master. 

Light footsteps rustled in the night, and a woman’s 
form came out of the wood. I recognised her in spite 
of the darkness; it was Agatha. 


130 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE> 


She came forward timidly, stopped, and breathed 
heavily. It was probably more fear at fording the 
river by night than her walk which had robbed her of 
breath. When she saw two men by the shed instead 
of one she gave a faint cry and fell back a step. 

“Oh, is that you?” asked Savka, thrusting a cake 
into his mouth. 

““]—I—.”” she faltered, dropping a little bundle she 
carried and glancing at me. “Jacob sent you his 
greetings, and told me to give you this—this & 

“Why do you tell a story? Jacob, indeed!” Savka 
laughed at her. “‘No fibbing! Sit down and pay us a 
visit.” 

Agatha cast another glance at me and irresolutely 
sat down. 

“TI had already given you up this evening,” said 
Savka after a long pause. “What makes you sit 
there like that? Eat something. Or is it a drink of 
vodka you want?” 

“What are you thinking about?” cried Agatha. 
“Am I a drunkard?” 

“Drink it! It warms the heart. Come on!” 

Savka handed Agatha the crooked glass. She drank 
the vodka slowly, without eating anything after it, 
and only blew noisily through her lips. 

“So you have brought something with you?” Savka 
continued as he undid the bundle. His voice took on 
a playfully indulgent tone. “She can’t come without 
bringing something. Aha! A pie and potatoes! These 


AGATHA 131 


people live well,” he sighed, facing me. “They are the 
only ones in the village who still have potatoes left 
over from winter.” 

It was too dark to see Agatha’s face, but from the 
movement of her shoulders and head I thought that 
she kept her eyes fixed on Savka’s face. I decided to 
take a stroll so as not to make the third at a tryst, 
and rose to my feet. But at that moment a nightin- 
gale in the wood suddenly gave out two deep contralto 
notes. Half a minute later it poured forth a fine, high 
trill and, having tried its voice thus, began to sing. 

Savka leaped up and listened. “That is last night’s 
bird!” he exclaimed. ‘“ Wait——” 

“Let it alone!” I called after him. “What do you 
want with it?” 

Savka waved his hand as much as to say, “Don’t 
shout!” and vanished into the darkness. He could 
be a splendid hunter and fisherman when he liked, but 
this gift was as much wasted as his strength. He was 
too lazy to turn it to account, and his passion for the 
chase he expended on idle feats. He loved to seize 
nightingales in his hands, or to shoot pike with bird 
shot, or to stand by the river for hours at a time trying 
with all his might to catch a little fish on a large hook. 

When she was left with me Agatha coughed and 
drew her hand several times across her brow. The 
vodka was already beginning to go to her head. 

“How have you been, Agatha?” I asked after a long 
silence, when it seemed awkward not to say something. 


132 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“Very well, thank you—you won’t tell any one, will 
you, master?” she added suddenly in a whisper. 

“No, no,” I reassured her. “ But you are very brave, 
Agatha. What if Jacob should find out?” 

“He won’t find out.” 

“He might.” 

“No, I shall get back before he does. He works 
on the railway now and comes home when the mail- 
train goes through, and I can hear it coming from 
here.” 

Agatha again drew her hand across her brow and 
looked in the direction which Savka had taken. The 
nightingale was still singing. A night-bird flew by 
close to the ground; as it caught sight of us it swerved, 
rustled its wings, and flew away across the river. 

The nightingale soon ceased, but still Savka did not 
return. Agatha rose to her feet, took two or three 
restless steps, and sat down again. 

“Where is he?” she burst out. “The train won’t 
wait till to-morrow! I must go at once!” 

“Savka!” I shouted. “‘Savka!” 

Not even an echo answered. Agatha stirred un- 
easily and rose once more. 

“It is time to go!” she cried in a troubled voice. 
_ “The train will be here in a moment. I know when 
the trains come.” 

The poor girl was right. In less than ten minutes 
we heard a distant noise. Agatha looked long at the 
wood and impatiently wrung her hands. 


AGATHA 133 


“Oh, where is he?” she cried with a nervous laugh. 
“T am going; indeed I am going!” 

Meanwhile, the rumbling grew louder. The clanking 
of the wheels was distinguishable now from the deep 
panting of the engine. A whistle blew and the train 
thundered across a bridge. Another minute and all 
was still. 

“Tl wait one second more,” sighed Agatha, sitting 
down resolutely. “I don’t care what happens, I'll 
wait.” 

At last Savka appeared in the gloom. He was 
humming softly and his bare feet fell noiselessly on the 
mellow earth of the garden. 

“Let me tell you the bad luck,” he cried with a 
merry laugh. “Just as I reached the bush and stretched 
out my hand he stopped singing! Oh, you little rat! 
I waited and waited for him to begin again and finally 
snapped my fingers at him——” 

Savka dropped awkwardly down beside Agatha and 
caught her round the waist with both arms to keep his 


_ balance. 


“Why, you’re as black as a thunder-cloud! What’s 
the matter?” he asked. 

For all his warm-hearted simplicity, Savka despised 
women. He treated them carelessly, in an offhand 
way, and even sank so low as to laugh with contempt 
at their feeling for himself. Heaven knows if this 
careless disdain may not have been one of the secrets 
of his charm for the village Dulcineas. He was grace- 


134 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


ful and comely, and a quiet caress always shone in his 
eyes even when they rested on the women he despised, 
but his outward appearance alone could not account 
for the fascination he exercised. Beside his happy 
exterior and his odd ways, it seems as if the touching 
role played by Savka must also have exerted its in- 
fluence over the women. He was known to every one 
as a failure, an unfortunate exile from his native hut. 

*“Ho-ho!” he cried. ‘“Let’s have another drink, 
Brother Agatha!” 

I rose and walked the length of the garden, picking 
my way among the beds of vegetables. They lay like 
large, flat graves, and an odour rose from them of fresh 
earth and moist, tender leaves newly wet with dew. 
The little red fire still gleamed and seemed to wink a 
smiling greeting. 

I heard a blissful laugh. It was Agatha. 

“And the train?” JI remembered. “It came long 
ago!” 

I waited a little while and then went back to the shed. 
Savka was sitting motionless, with his legs crossed, 
softly, almost inaudibly, humming a monosyllabic song 
that sounded like: 

“Oh, you—come you—you and I 

Overpowered by the vodka, by Savka’s careless 
caresses, and by the sultry heat of the night, Agatha 
lay on the ground with her head against his knees. 

“Why, Agatha, the train came in long ago!” I 
cried. 


Oe Re ee ee ee ee ee 


a a ig atid pe ia Ciera eo, Swen wey eee Pao . . f . he a 
- page Package hele RS | ee GE ae ee a ns ss — 


AGATHA 135 


Savka seized the suggestion. “Yes, yes, it’s time 
for you to go!” he said, raising his head. ' 

Agatha started up and looked at me. 

“Tt’s long past the time!” I said. 

Agatha turned and raised herself on one knee. She 
was suffering. For a minute her whole figure, as well 
as I could see in the darkness, expressed struggle and 
vacillation. There was a moment when she drew her- 
self up to rise, as if she had summoned her strength, 
but here some irresistible, implacable force smote her 
from head to foot and she dropped again. 

“Oh, what do I care?” she cried with a wild, deep 
laugh, and in that laugh rang reckless determination, 
impotence, pain. 

I walked quietly into the wood and from there went 
down to the river. The stream lay asleep. A soft 
flower on a high stem brushed my cheek like a child 
who tries to show that he is still waking. Having noth- 
ing to do, I felt for one of the lines and pulled it in. 
It resisted feebly and then hung limp. Nothing had 
been caught. The village and the opposite shore were 
invisible. A light flashed in one of the huts but quickly 
went out. I searched along the bank and found a 
hollow which I had discovered in the daytime, and in 
this I ensconced myself as if in an easy chair. I sat 
for a long time. I saw the stars begin to grow misty 
and dim; I felt a chill pass like a light sigh over the 
earth, stirring the leaves of the dreaming willows. 

“ A-ga-tha!” cried a faint voice on the other shore. 


136 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


It was the frightened husband searching for his wife 
through the village. At the same moment a burst of 
laughter came from the garden, from the wife who was 
trying, in a few hours of happiness, to make up for the 
torture that awaited her on the morrow. 

I fell into a doze. 

When I awoke, Savka was sitting beside me lightly 
tapping my shoulder. The river, the wood, both 
shores, the green, newly washed trees and fields were 
flooded with bright morning light. The rays of the 
rising sun beat on my back from between the slender 
trunks of the trees. 

“So you are fishing,’ chuckled Savka. “Get up!” 

I rose, stretched myself blissfully, and my awaken- 
ing lungs greedily drank in the moist, scented air. 

“Has Agatha gone?” I asked. 

“There she is.” Savka pointed in the direction of 
the ford. 

I looked and saw Agatha. Dishevelled, her ker- 
chief slipping from her hair, she was holding up her 
skirts and wading across the river. Her feet scarcely 
moved. 

“She feels the shoe pinching,” murmured Savka, 
gazing at her with half-closed eyes. “She is hanging 
her tail as she goes. They are as silly as cats and as 
timid as hares, those women. The idiot wouldn’t go 
when she was told to last night, and now she will 
catch it, and I'll be had up! There'll be another row 
about women.” 


Oe LS ae ae Te a 


ON pa ee ee RE I 


AGATHA 137 


Agatha stepped out onto the bank and started 
across the fields to the village. At first she walked 
boldly, but emotion and terror soon had their way 
with her; she looked back fearfully and stopped, 
panting. 

“She is frightened,” Savka smiled sadly, with his 
eyes on the bright-green ribbon that stretched across 
the dewy grass behind Agatha. “She doesn’t want to 
goon. Her husband has been standing there waiting 
for her for an hour. Do you see him?” 

Savka smiled as he spoke the last words, but my 
heart stood still. In the road, near one of the huts on 
the outskirts of the village, stood Jacob with his eyes 
fixed on his returning wife. He did not stir from one 
spot but stood as still as a post. What were his 
thoughts as he looked at her? What words had he 
prepared to receive her with? Agatha stood still for 
some time, looked back again as if expecting succour 
from us, and went on. Never have I seen any one, 
whether drunk or sober, walk with such a gait. Agatha 
seemed to be writhing under her husband’s gaze. 
First she zigzagged, and then stopped and trampled the 
ground in one spot, throwing out her arms, her knees 


bending under her, and then staggered back. After 


she had gone a hundred paces she looked back once 
more and sat down. 

I looked at Savka’s face. It was pale and drawn 
with that mixture of pity and aversion that men feel 
at the sight of a suffering animal. 


138 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“What is joy for the cat is tears for the mouse,” he 
sighed. 

Suddenly Agatha jumped up, threw back her head, 
and advanced with firm footsteps toward her husband. 
She was resolved now, one could see, and had plucked 
up her courage. 


—_ 


~ ’ Fil 


THE BEGGAR 


" IND sir, have pity; turn your attention to a 

poor, hungry man! For three days I have had 
nothing to eat; I haven’t five copecks for a lodging, 
I swear it before God. For eight years I was a village 
school-teacher and then I lost my place through in- 
trigues. I fell a victim to calumny. It is a year now 
since I have had anything to doa——” 

The advocate Skvortsoff looked at the ragged, fawn- 
coloured overcoat of the suppliant, at his dull, drunken 
eyes, at the red spot on either cheek, and it seemed to 
him as if he had seen this man somewhere before. 

““T have now had an offer of a position in the prov- 
ince of Kaluga,” the mendicant went on, “but I haven’t . 
the money to get there. Help me kindly; Iam ashamed 
to ask, but—I am obliged to by circumstances.” 

Skvortsoff’s eyes fell on the man’s overshoes, one of 
which was high and the other low, and he suddenly re- 
membered something. 

“Look here, it seems to me I met you day before 
yesterday in Sadovaya Street,” he said; “‘but you told 
me then that you were a student who had been ex- 
pelled, and not a village school-teacher. Do you re- 


member?” 
139 


140 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“N-no, that can’t be so,” mumbled the beggar, 
‘taken aback. “I am a village school-teacher, and if 
you like I can show you my papers.” 

“Have done with lying! You called yourself a 
student and even told me what you had been expelled 
for. Don’t you remember?” 

Skvortsoff flushed and turned from the ragged 
creature with an expression of disgust. 

“This is dishonesty, my dear sir!”’ he cried angrily. 
“This is swindling! I shall send the police for you, 
damn you! Even if you are poor and hungry, that 
does not give you any right to lie brazenly and shame- 
lessly !”’ 

The waif caught hold of the door-handle and looked 
furtively round the antechamber, like a detected thief. 

“I—I’m not lying—” he muttered. “I can show 
you my papers.” 

“Who would believe you?” Skvortsoff continued in- 
dignantly. “Don’t you know that it’s a low, dirty 
trick to exploit the sympathy which society feels for 
_ village school-teachers and students? It’s revolting!”’ 

Skvortsoff lost his temper and began to berate the 
mendicant unmercifully. The impudent lying of the 
ragamuffin offended what he, Skvortsoff, most prized 
in himself: his kindness, his tender heart, his com- 
passion for all unhappy beings. That lie, an attempt 
to take advantage of the pity of its “subject,” seemed 
to him to profane the charity which he liked to ex- 
tend to the poor out of the purity of his heart. At first 


THE BEGGAR 141 


the waif continued to protest innocence, but soon he 
grew silent and hung his head in confusion. 

“Sir!”’ he said, laying his hand on his heart, “the 
fact is I—was lying! I am neither a student nor a 
school-teacher. All that was a fiction. Formerly I 
sang in a Russian choir and was sent away for drunk- 
enness. But what else can I do? I can’t get along 
without lying. No one will give me anything when I 
tell the truth. With truth a man would starve to 
death or die of cold for lack of a lodging. You reason 
justly, I understand you, but—what can I do?” 

“What can you do? You ask what you can do?” 
cried Skvortsoff, coming close tohim. “Work! That’s 
what you can do! You must work!” 

“Work—yes, I know that myself; but where can I 
find work?” 

“Rot! You’re young and healthy and strong; you 
could always find work if you only wanted to, but 
you're lazy and spoiled and drunken! There’s a smell 
about you like a tap-room. You're rotten and false to 
the core, and all you can do is to lie. When you con- 
sent to lower yourself to work, you want a job in an 
office or in a choir or as a marker at billiards—any em- 
ployment for which you can get money without doing 
anything! How would you like to try your hand at 
manual labour? No, you’d never be a porter or a 
factory hand; you’re a man of pretentions, you 
are!” 


“By God, you judge harshly!” cried the beggar 


142 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


with a bitter laugh. “Where can I find manual la- 
bour? It’s too late for me to be a clerk because in 
trade one has to begin as a boy; no one would ever 
take me for a porter because they couldn’t order me 
about; no factory would have me because for that one 
has to know a trade, and I know none.” 

“Nonsense! You always find some excuse! How 
would you like to chop wood for me?” 

“‘T wouldn’t refuse to do that, but in these days even 
skilled wood-cutters find themselves sitting without 
bread.” 

“Huh! You loafers all talk that way. As soon as 
an offer is made you, you refuse it. Will you come 
and chop wood for me?” 

Yes, sir; I will.” 

“Very well; we'll soon find out. Splendid—we’ll 

99 

Skvortsoff hastened along, rubbing his hands, not 
without a feeling of malice, and called his cook out of 
the kitchen. . . 

“Here, Olga,” he said, “take this gentleman into 
the wood-shed and let him chop wood.” 

The tatterdemalion scarecrow shrugged his shoulders, 
as if in perplexity, and went irresolutely after the cook. 
It was obvious from his gait that he had not con- 
sented to go and chop wood because he was hungry 
and wanted work, but simply from pride and shame, 
because he had been trapped by his own words. It 
was obvious, too, that his strength had been under- 


ee ae 


THE BEGGAR 143 


mined by vodka and that he was unhealthy and did 
not feel the slightest inclination for toil. 

Skvortsoff hurried into the dining-room. From its 
windows one could see the wood-shed and everything 
that went on in the yard. Standing at the window, 
Skvortsoff saw the cook and the beggar come out into 
the yard by the back door and make their way across 
the dirty snow to the shed. Olga glared wrathfully 
at her companion, shoved him aside with her elbow, 
unlocked the shed, and angrily banged the door. 

“We probably interrupted the woman over her 
coffee,” thought Skvortsoff. “What an ill-tempered 
creature!” 

Next he saw the pseudo-teacher, pseudo-student seat 
himself on a log and become lost in thought with his 
red cheeks resting on his fists. The woman flung down 
an axe at his feet, spat angrily, and, judging from the 
expression of her lips, began to scold him. The beg- 
gar irresolutely pulled a billet of wood toward him, set 
it up between his feet, and tapped it feebly with the 
axe. The billet wavered and fell down. The beggar 
again pulled it to him,. blew on his freezing hands, and 
tapped it with his axe cautiously, as if afraid of hit- 
ting his overshoe or of cutting off his finger. The 
stick of wood again fell to the ground. 

Skvortsoff’s anger had vanished and he now began 
to feel a little sorry and ashamed of himself for having 
set a spoiled, drunken, perchance sick man to work at 
menial labour in the cold. 


144 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“Well, never mind,” he thought, going into his study 
from the dining-room. “I did it for his own good.” 

An hour later Olga came in and announced that the 
wood had all been chopped. 

“Good! Give him half a rouble,”’ said‘Skvortsoff. 
“If he wants to he can come back and cut wood on the 
first day of each month. We can always find work for 
him.” 

On the first of the month the waif made his appear- 
ance and again earned half a rouble, although he could 
barely stand on his legs. From that day on he often 
appeared in the yard and every time work was found 
for him. Now he would shovel snow, now put the 
wood-shed in order, now beat the dust out of rugs and 
mattresses. Every time he received from twenty to 
forty copecks, and once, even a pair mt old trousers 
were sent out to him. 

When Skvortsoff moved into another house he 
hired him to help in the packing and hauling of the 
furniture. This time the waif was sober, gloomy, and 
silent. He hardly touched the furniture, and walked 
behind the wagons hanging his head, not even making 
a pretence of appearing busy. He only shivered in the 
cold and became embarrassed when the carters jeered 
at him for his idleness, his feebleness, and his tattered, 
fancy overcoat. After the moving was over Skvort- 
soff sent for him. 

“Well, I see that my words have taken effect,” he 
said, handing him a rouble. ‘“‘Here’s for your pains. 


Lee sO 


THE BEGGAR 145 


I see you are sober and have no objection to work. 
What is your name?” 

“Lushkoff.” 

“Well, Lushkoff, I can now offer you some other, 
cleaner employment. Can you write?” 

“T can.” 

“Then take this letter to a friend of mine to-morrow 
and you will be given some copying to do. Work 
hard, don’t drink, and remember what I have said to 
you. Good-bye!” 

Pleased at having put a man on the right path, 
Skvortsoff tapped Lushkoff kindly on the shoulder and 
even gave him his hand at parting. Lushkoff took the 
letter, and from that day forth came no more to the 
yard for work. 

Two years went by. Then one evening, as Skvortsoff 
was standing at the ticket window of a theatre paying 
for his seat, he noticed a little man beside him with a 
coat collar of curly fur and a worn sealskin cap. This 
little individual timidly asked the ticket seller for a 
seat in the gallery and paid for it in copper coins. 

“Lushkoff, is that you?” cried Skvortsoff, recognis- 
ing in the little man his former wood-chopper. “How 
are you? What are you doing? How is everything 
with you?” 

“All right. I am a notary now and get thirty-five 
roubles a month.” 

“Thank Heaven! That’s fine! I am delighted for 
your sake. I am very, very glad, Lushkoff. You see, 


146. STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


you are my godson, ina sense. I gave you a push along 
the right path, you know. Do you remember what a 
roasting I gave you, eh? I nearly had you sinking 
into the ground at my feet that day. Thank you, old 
man, for not forgetting my words.” 

“Thank you, too,” said Lushkoff. “If I hadn’t 
come to you then I might still have been calling my- 
self a teacher or a student to this day. Yes, by flying 
to your protection I dragged myself out of a pit.” 

“T am very glad, indeed.” 

“Thank you for your kind words and deeds. You 
talked splendidly to me then. I am very grateful to 
you and to your cook. God bless that good and noble 
woman! You spoke finely then, and I shall be in- 
debted to you to my dying day; but, strictly speaking, 
it was your cook, Olga, who saved me.” 

“How is that?” 

“Like this. When I used to come to your house to 
chop wood she used to begin: ‘Oh, you sot, you! Oh, 
you miserable creature! There’s nothing for you but 
ruin.” And then she would sit down opposite me and 
grow sad, look into my face and weep. ‘Oh, you un- 
lucky man! There is no pleasure for you in this world 
and there will be none in the world to come. You 
drunkard! You will burn in hell. Oh, you unhappy 
one!’ And so she would carry on, you know, in that 
strain. I can’t tell you how much misery she suffered, 
how many tears she shed for my sake. But the chief 
thing was—she used to chop the wood for me. Do 


NF 


Se ee ee ee ae ee ee ee ee ee eee 


THE BEGGAR 147 


you know, sir, that I did not chop one single stick of 
wood for you? She did it all. Why this saved me, 
why I changed, why I stopped drinking at the sight 
of her I cannot explain. I only know that, owing to 
her words and noble deeds a change took place in my 
heart; she set me right and I shall never forget it. 
However, it is time to go now; there goes the bell.” 
Lushkoff bowed and departed to the gallery. 


CHILDREN 


APA, mamma, and Aunt Nadia are not at home. 
They have gone to a christening party at the old 
officer’s—the one that always rides a little grey horse— 
and Grisha, Annie, Aliosha, Sonia, and Andrew, the 
cook’s son, are sitting at the dining-room table playing 
loto, waiting for their return. To tell the truth, it is 
already past bedtime, but how can they possibly go to 
sleep without first finding out from mamma what the 
baby looked like and what there had been for sup- 
per? 

The table is lit by a hanging lamp and strewn with 
numbers, nutshells, scraps of paper, and counters. 
Before each player lie two cards and a little heap of 
counters with which to cover the figures on the cards. 
In the centre of the table gleams a little white -dish 
containing five-copeck pieces, and near the dish lie a 
half-eaten apple, a pair of scissors, and a plate into 
which one is supposed to put one’s nutshells. The 
children are playing for money and the stakes are five 
copecks. The agreement is that if any one cheats he 
must go at once. The players are alone in the dining- 
room. Nurse is down-stairs in the kitchen showing 


the cook how to cut out a dress and the oldest brother, 
148 


CHILDREN 149 


Vasia, a schoolboy in the fifth class, is lying on the 
sofa in the drawing-room feeling bored. 

The children are playing with fervour; it is Grisha’s 
face that depicts the most acute feeling. He is a nine- 
year-old boy with a closely shaved head, fat cheeks, 
and lips as full as a negro’s; he has already entered 
the preparatory class, and so he considers himself grown 
up and very clever. He is playing solely for the sake 
of the money; if it weren’t for the copecks in the lit- 
tle dish he would have been asleep long ago. His 
brown eyes rove uneasily and jealously over the cards 
of his opponents. Terror lest he should lose, enmity, 
and the financial calculations which fill his shaved head 
won't let him sit still or concentrate his thoughts, and 
so he is wriggling as if he were sitting on pins and 
needles. When he wins he greedily grabs the money 
and immediately thrusts it into his pocket. His sister 
Annie, a child of eight with a pointed chin and bright, 
clever eyes, is also terrified lest somebody else should 
win. She alternately flushes and pales and keeps a 
watchful eye on the players. It isn’t the money that 
interests her; her pleasure in the game comes from 
pride. Sonia, the other sister, is six. Her head is 
covered with curls and her cheeks are a colour that 
can only be seen on the faces of healthy children, 
expensive dolls, and on candy boxes. She is playing 
loto for the sake of the process involved in the playing. 
Her face is alive with emotion. She laughs and claps 
her hands no matter who wins. 


150 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


Aliosha, a puffy, spherical little person, pants, 
snuffles, and makes round eyes at the cards. He is 
neither greedy of gain nor of success. They can’t 
drive him away from the table, they can’t put him to 
bed, and that is all there is to it; he looks phlegmatic, 
but at heart he is a little wretch. He has taken his 
place at the table not so much for the sake of the loto 
as for the sake of the quarrels that are inseparable 
from the game. He is horribly pleased if one child 
hits or abuses another. He only knows the figure one 
and those ending in zero, so Annie is covering his num- 
bers for him. 

The fifth player, Andrew, the cook’s son, is a dark- 
faced, sickly boy. He wears a cotton shirt and a 
copper cross hangs round his neck. He is standing 
quite still, dreamily contemplating the cards, and is 
indifferent to his own success and that of the others 
because he is entirely absorbed in the mathematical 
side of the game and in its simple philosophy. “It is 
strange,”’ he is thinking, “how many different numbers 
there are in this world; how is it they don’t get mixed 
up?” 

With the exception of Sonia and Aliosha, the play- 
ers take turns in calling out the numbers. Because the 
numbers are all so alike, they have, with practice, 
invented the funniest expressions and nicknames for 
them—seven they call “the poker”; eleven, “little 
sticks”; ninety, “grandpa,” and so forth. The game 
is moving along briskly. 


CHILDREN 151 


“Thirty-two!” cries Grisha as he draws the yellow 
counters one by one from the paternal hat. “‘Seven- 
teen! A poker! Twenty-three—climb a tree!” 

Annie notices that Andrew has missed the twenty- 
three. At any other time she would have pointed this 
out to him, but now, when her pride is lying in the 
little dish with her copeck, she rejoices to see it. 

“Twenty-two!” continues Grisha. “Grandpa! 
Nine!” 

“Oh, a cockroach! a cockroach!” shrieks Sonia, 
pointing to a cockroach which is running across the 
table. 

“Don’t kill it!”’ says Aliosha in a deep voice. “It 
may have babies!” 

Sonia follows the cockroach with her eyes, thinking 
about its babies and wondering what little cockroach 
children can possibly look like. 

“Forty-three! One!” continues Grisha in agony be- 
cause Annie has already covered two lines. “Six!” 

“Game! I’ve won the game!” cries Sonia casting 
up her eyes coquettishly and laughing. 

The faces of the players fall. 

“We must make sure of it!” Grisha says, looking 
spitefully at her. 

As the biggest and cleverest, Grisha has appro- 
priated the right to be umpire; what he says is 
final. 

They spend a long time carefully verifying Sonia’s 
card and, to the great regret of all her opponents, find 


152 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


that she has not been cheating. Another game com- 
mences. 

“T saw a funny thing yesterday,” Annie remarks, as 
if to herself. “Philip Philipovitch turned his eyelids 
inside out, and his eyes were all red and horrid, just 
like a devil’s.” 

“I’ve seen that, too,” says Grisha. “Eight! One of 
the boys at school can wiggle his ears. Twenty- 
seven!” 

Andrew lifts his eyes to Grisha’s face and says: 

“I can wiggle my ears.” 

“Come on, wiggle them!” 

Andrew wiggles his eyes, his lips, his fingers, and 
thinks that his ears, too, are in motion. There is 
general laughter. 

“That Philip Philipovitch isn’t nice,” sighs Sonia. 
“He came into the nursery yesterday; and I was only 
in my chemise. I was so ashamed!” 

“Game!” shouts Grisha suddenly, grabbing the 
money out of the dish. ‘Prove it if you want to!” 

The cook’s son looks up and turns pale. 

“Then I can’t go on playing,” he says in a low voice. 

“Why?” 

“Because my money’s all gone.” 

“You mayn’t play without money!” Grisha de- 
clares. 

As a last resort Andrew searches through his pockets 
once more and finds nothing but crumbs and the gnawed 
stump of a pencil. The corners of his mouth go down 


a =,” ——— 


ihe et Se 


ET ee Ce EM Sate g Se ee aie et 


“ 
; 


CHILDREN 153 


and he begins to blink painfully. He is just going to 
cry. 

“T’ll let you have the money!” exclaims Sonia, un- 
able to endure his agonised glances. “Only see that 
you give it back!” 

The money is paid in, and the game goes on. 

“T hear ringing!”’ says Annie, opening her eyes wide. 

They all stop playing and gaze open-mouthed at the 
dark window. The light of the lamp is shining among 
the shadows outside. 

“You just think you heard it.” 

“At night they only ring bells in the churchyard,” 
says Andrew. 

“Why do they ring them there?” 

“To keep robbers from breaking into the church. 
Robbers are afraid of bells. 

“Why do robbers want to break into the church?” 
asks Sonia. 

“Why? To kill the watchman, of course!” 

A minute elapses in silence. They look at one an- 
other, shudder, and continue the game. 

“He’s cheating!” roars Aliosha suddenly, for no 


* reason at all. 


“You liar! I wasn’t cheating!” Andrew turns 
white, makes a wry face, and thumps Aliosha on 
the head. Aliosha glares wrathfully, puts one knee 
on the table, and—biff!—slaps Andrew on the cheek! 
Each slaps the other once more, and then they begin 
to bawl. These horrors are too much for Sonia; she, 


154 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


too, bursts into tears, and the dining-room resounds 
with discordant wails. 

But you need not imagine that this puts an end to 
the game. Before five minutes are over the children 
are laughing again and babbling as peacefully as ever. 
Their faces are wet with tears, but this does not pre- 
vent them from smiling. Aliosha is even radiant— 
there has been a quarrel! 

Enter into the dining-room Vasia, the schoolboy, 
looking sleepy and bored. 

“This is disgusting!” he thinks, seeing Grisha fum- 
bling in his pocket, in which the coins are jingling. 
“The idea of letting the children have money! The 
idea of letting them gamble! A fine education this is 
for them, I swear! It’s disgusting!” 

But the children are playing with such relish that 
he begins to want to take a seat beside them himself 
and try his own luck. 

“Wait a minute! I'll play, too,” he exclaims. 

“Put in a copeck!” 

“In a minute,” he says, feeling through his pockets. 
“T haven’t any copecks, but here’s a rouble. I'll put 
in a rouble.” 

“No, no, no; put in a copeck!” 

“You sillies, a rouble is worth more than a copeck,” 
the boy explains. “Whoever wins can give me the 
change.” 

“No; please go away.” 

The schoolboy shrugs his shoulders and goes into 


CHILDREN 155 


the kitchen to get some change from the servants. It 
seems there is none to be had there. 

“You change it for me,” he urges Grisha, coming 
back. “Tll pay you a discount on it. You won’t? 
Then sell me ten copecks for my rouble.” 

Grisha eyes Vasia with suspicion. He scents a plot 
or foul play of some sort. 

“No, I won't,” he says, clutching his pocket. 

Vasia loses his temper and calls the players idiots 
and donkeys. 

“Vasia, I'll put it in for you,” cries Sonia. “Sit 
down!” 

The boy takes his seat and lays down two cards be- 
fore him. Annie begins calling out the numbers. 

“I’ve dropped a copeck!” Grisha suddenly declares 
in a troubled voice. “Wait a minute!” 

The children take down the lamp and crawl under 
the table to look for the coin. 

They seize nutshells and trash in their hands and 
bump their heads together, but the copeck is not to be 
found. They renew the search and continue it until 
Vasia snatches the lamp out of Grisha’s hands and puts 
it back in its place. Grisha continues to search in the 
dark. 

But now, at last, the copeck is found. The players 
take their seats at the table with the idea of resuming 
the game. 

“Sonia is asleep!” cries Annie. 


With her curly head on her arms, Sonia is wrapped 


156 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


in slumber as peaceful and profound as if she had gone 
to sleep an hour ago. She fell asleep suddenly while 
the others were looking for the copeck. 

“‘Come and lie down on mamma’s bed!” says Annie, 
leading her out of the dining-room. “Come!” 

The whole crowd go with her, and some five minutes 
later mamma’s bed offers a remarkable spectacle. On 
it sleeps Sonia. Aliosha is snoring beside her. Lying 
with their heads to her heels sleep Grisha and Annie. 
And here, too, the cook’s son, Andrew, has found room 
for himself. The coins lie scattered beside them, 
powerless until the beginning of a new game. 

Good night! 


THE TROUBLESOME GUEST 


N a low, lopsided hut inhabited by the forester, 
Artem, sat two men. One of them was Artem him- 
self, a short, lean peasant with a senile, wrinkled face 
and a beard growing out of his neck; the other was a 
passing hunter, a tall young fellow wearing a new shirt 
and large, muddy boots. 

In the dark night outside the windows roared the 
wind with which nature lashes herself before a thunder- 
storm. The tempest howled fiercely and the stooping » 
trees moaned with pain. Flying leaves rattled azainst 
the sheet of paper that patched a broken window-pane. 

“Tl tell you what, boy,” half whispered Artem, in 
a hoarse, squeaky voice, staring at the hunter with 
fixed and startled eyes, “I am not afraid of wolves nor 
witches nor wild animals, but I am afraid of men. 
You can guard yourself against wild animals with guns 
or other arms, but there is no protection against a bad 
be 

“Of course not. You can shoot an animal, but if 
you shot a robber you would have to answer for it 
by going to Siberia.” 

“IT have been a forester here for close on thirty 


years, and I have had more trouble with bad men than 
157 


158 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


I can begin to tell you. I have had them here by the 
score. This hut being in a clearing and the road pass- 
ing so near brings the wretches this way. One of the 
ruffians will come along and, without troubling to take 
off his cap, will just rush up and order me: ‘Here, give 
me some bread!’ Where can I get bread from? What 
right has he to ask for it? Am I a millionaire that I 
should feed every drunkard that passes by? But his 
eyes are glistening with wickedness, and without a 
moment’s hesitation he shouts in my ear: ‘Give me 
some bread!’ Then I giveittohim. I wouldn’t want 
to fight the heathen brute. Some of them have 
shoulders a yard wide and great fists as big as your 
boot, and I—you see what I am! You could knock 
me down with your little finger. Well, I give him 
his bread and he gorges himself and lies all over the 
hut, and as for saying a word of thanks—not he! Then 
there come some that want money; then it’s ‘Tell me 
where your money is!” But what money have I got? 
Where should I get money from?” 

“Was there ever a forester that didn’t have money?” 
laughed the hunter. “You get your wages every 
month and sell wood on the sly, too, I’ll be bound.” 

Artem stared in terror at the hunter and wagged 
his beard as a magpie wags its tail. 

“You are too young to say such things to me,”’ said 
he. ‘You will have to answer for those words before 
God. Who are you? Where are you from?” 

“IT am Nethed, the bailiff’s son, from Viasofka.”’ 


er a ee 


THE TROUBLESOME GUEST 159 


“Yes, out larking with your gun. I used to like to 
go larking with a gun, too, when I was younger. Well, 
well—oh—oh!” yawned Artem. “It’s a great mis- 
fortune, good people are scarce and robbers and mur- 
derers too plentiful to count.” 

“You speak as if you were afraid of me.” 

“What an idea! Why should I be afraid of you? 
I can see; I can understand. You didn’t burst in; 
you came in quietly and bowed and crossed yourself 
like an honest man. I know what’s what. I don’t 
mind letting you have bread. I am a widower. I 
never light the fire in the stove, and I have sold my 
samovar and am too poor to have meat and such 
things, but bread—you are welcome to that!” 

At that moment something under the bench growled 
and the growling was followed by hissing. Artem 
jumped and drew up his feet, looking inquiringly at 
the hunter. 

“That is my dog insulting your cat,” said the hunter. 
“You devils, you,” he shouted to the animals under 
the bench. “Lie down or you'll get a whipping! 
Why, uncle, how thin your cat is! Nothing but skin 
and bones!” 

“She is getting old; it is time she was killed. So 
you say you are from Viasofka?”’ 

“You don’t give her anything to eat, I can see that. 
She is a living creature even if she is a cat. It’s a 
shame!” 

“Viasofka is a wicked place,’”’ continued Artem as if 


160 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


he hadn’t heard the hunter. “The church there was 
robbed twice in one year. Can you believe that there 
are such heathen? They not only don’t fear man; they 
don’t even fear God! To steal God’s property! To 
hang for that is too little! In the old days the gov- 
ernors used to have such knaves beheaded.” 

“You can punish them as you like, thrash them, or 
sentence them to anything you please, you'll only be 
wasting your time. You can’t knock the bad out of 
a bad man.” 

“The Holy Virgin have mercy on us and save us,” 
sighed the forester in a trembling voice, “save us 
from our enemies and evil-wishers! Last week, at 
Bolovich, one of the haymakers struck another in the 
chest and beat him to death. Thy will be done, O 
Lord! How do you think it began? One haymaker 
came out of a tavern drunk and met another, also 
drunk—— bd 

Hearkening to something the hunter suddenly 
craned his neck forward and strained his ears to catch 
some sound. 

“Stop!” he interrupted the forester. “I thought I 
heard some one calling.” 

The hunter and the forester both fixed their eyes 
on the dark window and listened attentively. Above 
the noise of the trees they caught the sounds that strike 
an attentive ear during a storm, and it was hard to dis- 
tinguish whether some one was really calling or whether 
it was only the wind sobbing in the chimney. But now 


THE TROUBLESOME GUEST 161 


a gust that tore at the roof and rattled the paper in the 
window brought a distinct cry: “Help!” 

“Talking about murderers, here they are!” cried 
the hunter. He paled and got up. “Some one is being 
robbed.” 

“The Lord preserve us!” whispered the forester, 
also turning pale and rising. 

The hunter looked aimlessly out of the window and 
strode across the hut. 

“What a night, what a night!” he muttered. “As 
black as pitch and just the time for a robbery. Did 
you hear that? Some one screamed again.” 

The forester looked at the icon, then at the hunter, 
and sank feebly onto a bench, like a man who has been 
shocked by sudden news. 

“Oh, son,” he wailed, “go into the hall and bolt the 
outside door! And the light ought to be put out!” 

“‘What for?” 

“They might come in here. Who knows? Oh, we 
are all miserable sinners!” 

“We have got to go out, and you want to bolt the 
door! Come, shall we start?” 

The hunter threw his gun across his shoulder and 
seized his cap. 

“Put on your coat! Get your gun! Here, Flerka, 
here!” he called to his dog. “Flerka!” 

A long-eared dog, a cross between a setter and a 
mastiff, came out from under the bench and lay down 
at his master’s feet, wagging his tail. 


162 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


““Why don’t you get up?” cried the hunter to the 
forester. ‘“‘Aren’t you coming?” 

“Where to?” 

“To help.” 

“Why should I go?” The forester made a gesture 
of indifference and huddled himself together. “Let 
him alone!” 

“Why won’t you come?” 

“‘After those blood-curdling stories, I refuse to go 
one step into the darkness. Let him alone! I’ve seen 
dreadful things happen in those woods.” 

“What are you afraid of? Haven’t you got a gun? 
Come along; it’s scary work going alone; it will be 
jollier together. Did you hear that? There’s that 
screaming again! Get up!” 

“What do you take me for, boy?” groaned the for- 
ester. “Do you think I’m going out there like a fool, 
to be murdered?” 

“So you won’t go?” 

The forester was silent. The dog, probably hear- 
ing the human cries, began to bark dismally. 

“Will you come, I say?” shouted the hunter, glaring 
angrily. 

“You worry me,” the forester said, frowning. “Go 
yourself!” 

“You—you dirty beast!” muttered the hunter, turn- 
ing toward the door. “Here, Flerka!”’ 

He went out, leaving the door open. The wind 
swept through the hut, the candle flame flickered, 
flared brightly, and went out. 


le 


THE TROUBLESOME GUEST 163 


As he closed the door after the hunter the forester 
saw the pools of water in the clearing, the pines, and 
the retreating form of his guest lit up by a flash of 
lightning. The thunder growled in the distance. 

“Holy, holy, holy!” he whispered, hurriedly throwing 
the heavy bolt into place. “What weather the Lord 
has sent us!” 

Re-entering the room, he felt his way to the stove, 
climbed up, and covered his head. Lying under his 
sheepskin coat, he strained his ears to listen. The 
screams had stopped, but now the thunder was roaring 
louder and louder, clap on clap. A heavy, driving rain 
beat fiercely against the glass and the paper pane of 
the window. 

“What a storm!” he thought, and pictured to him- 
self the hunter, soaking wet and stumbling over the 
stumps. “His teeth must be chattering with fear!” 

Not more than ten minutes had elapsed before he 
heard footsteps, followed by loud knocking at the door. 

“Who is there?” he called. 

“Tt is I!” answered the hunter’s voice. “Open the 
door!” 

The forester climbed down from the stove, felt for 
the candle, lit it, and went to. open the door. The 
hunter and his dog were drenched to the skin. They 
had been caught in the fiercest and heaviest of the rain 
and were streaming like wet rags. | 

“What happened out there?” asked the forester. 

“A woman in a wagon had got off the road,” an- 


164 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


swered the hunter, trying to catch his breath, “and 
had fallen into a ditch.” 

“What a fool! And got scared, I suppose. Did 
you put her back on the road?” 

“I refuse to answer such a coward as you.” 

The hunter threw his wet cap on the bench and con- 
tinued: “Now I know that you are a coward and the 
scum of the earth. And you are supposed to be a 
watchman, and you get wages for it! You worthless 
trash, you!” 

The forester crawled guiltily to the stove, groaned, 
and lay down. The hunter sat down on the bench, 
thought an instant, and then threw himself, wet as he 
was, full length along it. Next moment he jumped up 
again, blew out the candle, and again lay down. Once, 
at an unusually loud thunderclap, he turned over, spat, 
and muttered: 

“So he was afraid—and what if some one had been 
murdering the woman? Whose business was it to go 
to her help? And he’s an old man, too, and a Chris- 
tian! He’s a pig, that’s what he is!” 

The forester grunted and heaved a deep sigh. Flerka 
shook herself violently in the darkness and scattered 
drops of water everywhere. 

“TI don’t suppose you would have cared one bit if 
the old woman had been murdered!” continued the 
hunter. “By God, I didn’t know you were a man like 
that!” 

Silence fell. The storm had blown over and the 


THE TROUBLESOME GUEST 165 


thunder now rumbled in the distance, but it was still 

. t if it had been you calling for help and not a 
woman?” the hunter burst out. “How would you 
have liked it, you beast, if no one had run to your 
rescue? You drive me crazy with your chicken-hearted 
ways, damn you!” 

Then, after another long entr’acte, the hunter said: 

“If you are as afraid of people as you seem to be, 
you must have money somewhere. A poor man doesn’t 
get frightened like that.” 

“You will answer for those words before God,” 
croaked Artem from the stove. “I haven’t a penny.” 

“Huh! Nonsense! Cowards always have money. 
Why are you so afraid of people? Of course you have 
money. I believe I'll just rob you on purpose to teach 
you. a lesson!” 

Artem silently slipped down from the stove, lit the 
candle, and sat down under the icon. He was pale 
and did not take his eyes off the hunter. 

“Yes, I shall certainly rob you,” continued the 
hunter. “What do you think? Shouldn’t one give 
one’s brother a lesson? Tell me where you have hid- 
den the money!” 

Artem drew his feet up under him and blinked. 

“What are you hugging yourself for? Have you 
lost your tongue, you clown? Why don’t you answer?” 

The hunter jumped up and strode toward the for- 
ester. 


166 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“There he sits with his eyes popping out of his head 
like an owl! Well! Give me the money or I'll shoot 
you with my gun!” 

“Why do you torment me?” whimpered the forester, 
and great tears rolled out of his eyes. ‘“‘ What have I 
done to you? God is witness to everything. You 
will have to answer for your words before God. You 
have no right to ask me for money.” 

The hunter looked at Artem’s weeping face, frowned, 
marched across the hut, angrily clapped on his cap, and 
seized his gun. 

“Bah! You’re too sickening to look at!” he mut- 
tered between his teeth. “I can’t endure the sight 
of you! I couldn’t sleep here, anyway! Good-bye! 
Here, Flerka!”’ 

The door slammed and the troublesome guest went 
out with his dog. Artem locked the door behind him, 
crossed himself, and lay down. 


ae. 


NOT WANTED 


T is seven o'clock of a June evening. A throng 
of summer residents, just alighted from the train, 
is crawling along the road that leads from the little 
station of Kilkovo. They are mostly the fathers of 
families and are laden with hand-bags, portfolios, and 
feminine bandboxes. They all look weary and hungry 
and cross, as if it were not for them that the sun was 
shining and the grass was so green. 

Crawling there, among others, is Paul Zaikin, a 
member of the circuit court, tall and round-shouldered, 
perspiring, scarlet, and glum. 

“Do you come out into the country every day?” 
asks another summer resident in carroty-red trousers. 

“No, not every day,” rejoins Zaikin with gloom. 
“My wife and son live here all the time, but I only 
come twice a week. I have no time to make the trip 
every day, and, besides, it’s too costly.” 

“You’re right about the expense,” sighs he of the 
carroty trousers. ‘“‘One can’t go to the station on foot 
in the city, one has to hire a cab; then the ticket costs 
forty-two copecks; and then one buys a newspaper to 
read on the way anda glass of vodka to keep up one’s 


strength—all these are trivial expenses, but before you 
167 


168 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


know it the copecks have mounted up to two hundred 
roubles by the end of the summer. Of course the lap 
of nature is worth more than that, and the idyls and 
all—I won’t attempt to deny it—but, with our salaries 
as government officials, every copeck counts, as you 
know. If you are careless enough to waste a copeck it 
will keep you awake all night. Yes, indeed. I, my 
dear sir (I have not the honour of knowing your name), 
get a salary of a little less than two thousand roubles 
a year. State councilor is my rank, and yet I only 
smoke second-rate tobacco and haven’t a rouble to 
spare to buy myself vichy water which the doctors 
prescribe for my gravel.” 

‘It’s absolutely atrocious,” says Zaikin after a long 
pause. “I, sir, am convinced that suburban life was 
invented by devils and women; the devil invented it 
from malice and the women from unbounded folly. 
Good Lord! This isn’t life; this is penal servitude; 
this is hell. It’s so sweltering and hot here one scarcely 
can breathe, and yet one is driven from one place to 
another like a thing accursed, with never a corner to 
take refuge in. And in town you’ve no furniture left 
and no servant; everything has been dragged to the 
country. You feed Heaven knows how; you never have 
tea because there is no one to light the samovar; you 
never wash, and then you come here, into the lap of 
nature, and have to tramp through the dust, on foot, 
in this heat—bah! Are you married?” 

“Yes; I have three children,” sigh the red trousers. 


SL 


NOT WANTED 169 


“Atrocious! It’s astonishing to me that we are still 
alive.” 

At last the two men reach the summer colony. 
Zaikin bids farewell to the red trousers and goes to his 
own house. There he is met by a dead silence. He 
hears only the buzzing of mosquitoes and the supplica- 
tions for help of a fly that is making a spider’s dinner. 
Muslin curtains hang before the windows and behind 
these gleam faded red geranium blossoms. Flies are 
dozing on the unpainted wooden walls among the 
cheap coloured prints. There is not a soul in the hall, 
in the kitchen, in the dining-room. At last, in the room 
which does duty as living-room and drawing-room 
both, Zaikin discovers his son Peter, a small boy of 
six. Peter is sitting at the table, snuffling loudly and 
hanging his lower lip, and with a pair of scissors is 
cutting the knave of diamonds out of a card. 

“Oh, is that you, papa?” he asks without turning 
round. “Good evening!” 

“Good evening! Where is your mother?” 

“Mamma? Oh, she has gone with Miss Olga to a 
rehearsal. They’re going to act a play day after to- 
morrow. And they’re going to take me. Are you 
going?” 

“H’m. And when is she coming back?” 

“She said she would be back this evening.” 

“Where is Natalia?” 

“Mamma took Natalia with her to help her dress 
at the rehearsal, and Akulina has gone to the woods to 


170 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


get mushrooms. Papa, why do mosquitoes’ stomachs 
get red when they bite?” 

“T don’t know. Because they suck blood. So there 
is no one at home?” 

**No, no one but me.” 

Zaikin sinks into a chair and for a minute looks 
dully out of the window. 

““Who’s going to give us our dinner?” he asks. 

“They didn’t cook any dinner to-day, papa. 
Mamma thought you wouldn’t come home to-day, and 
so she said for them not to cook dinner. She and Miss 
Olga are going to have dinner at the rehearsal.” 

“How delightful! And what have you had to eat?” 

“T’ve had some milk. They bought some milk for 
me for six copecks. But, papa, why do mosquitoes 
suck blood?” 

Zaikin suddenly feels as if some heavy object had 
rolled down on his liver and were beginning to gnaw it. 
He feels so vexed and injured and bitter that he trem- 
bles and breathes heavily and longs to leap up, bang 
on the floor with some heavy weight, and break into 
recriminations. But he remembers that the doctor has 
sternly forbidden him excitement; so he gets up and, 
making a great effort to control himself, begins whis- 
tling an air from “The Huguenots.” 

He hears Peter’s voice: “Papa, can you act plays?” 

Zaikin’s temper is going. 

“Oh, leave me alone with your stupid questions!” 
he cries. “You stick like a wet leaf. You're six al- 


SS 


NOT WAN'RED 1 


ready, and yet you're as silly as you were three years 
ago. You’reastupid, rowdy boy. What do you mean 
by destroying those cards, for instance? How dare 
you destroy them?” 

“They’re not your cards,” says Peter, turning round. 
“Natalia gave them to me.” 

“That’s a fib, a fib, you good-for-nothing boy!” 
cries Zaikin, more and more incensed. “‘ You’re always 
fibbing! You need a whipping, you little puppy. I'll 
pull your ears for you!” 

Peter jumps up, thrusts out his neck, and stares 
intently at his father’s red, angry face. His large eyes 
first blink and then are clouded with moisture, and he 
screws up his face. 3 

“What are you scolding me for?” wails Peter. 
“Why can’t you let me alone, donkey? I don’t bother 
any one, and I’m not naughty, and I do as I’m 
told, and you—you get angry! Why do you scold 
me?” 

The boy spoke with conviction and wept so bitterly 
that Zaikin grew ashamed of himself. 

“Yes, really, what am I trying to pick a quarrel 
with him for?” he reflects. “Come, that will do!” he 
says, touching Peter’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Peterkin; 
forgive me! You’re a good little boy, a nice little 
boy, and I love you.” 

Peter wipes his eyes on his sleeve, resumes his 
former seat with a sigh, and starts cutting out a queen. 
Zaikin goes into his study, stretches himself out on the 


- 172 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


sofa, and begins to muse with his hands behind his 
head. 

The boy’s recent tears have softened his anger, and 
his liver is, little by little, beginning to feel easier. He 
now only feels hungry and tired. 

“Papa!” he hears on the other side of the door. 
“Shall I show you my collection of insects?” 

“Yes, show it to me.” 

Peter comes into the study and hands his father a 
long green box. Even before raising it to his ear 
Zaikin hears a despairing buzzing and the scratching 
of tiny feet on the sides of the box. As he lifts the 
cover he sees a great number of butterflies, beetles, 
grasshoppers, and flies fixed by pins to the bottom of 
the box. All, with the exception of two or three but- 
terflies, are alive and wriggling. 

‘And that little grasshopper is still alive!”’ exclaims 
Peter, astonished. ‘“‘We caught him yesterday morn- 
ing, and he isn’t dead yet!” 

“Who taught you to stick them down like that?” 

“Miss Olga.” 

“Miss Olga ought to be stuck down herself,” says 
Zaikin with disgust. “Take them away! It’s shame- 
“ful to torture animals.” 

“Heavens! How atrociously he is being brought 
up!” he thinks as Peter departs. 

Zaikin has forgotten his hunger and fatigue and is 
thinking only of the fate of his boy. The daylight has 
gradually faded outside the windows; the summer 


eK 


NOT WANTED 173. 


residents can be heard coming home in little groups 
from their evening bath. Some one takes up his stand 
below the open window and cries: “Mushrooms! 
Who wants mushrooms?” Receiving no answer, he 
shuffles on farther with his bare feet. And now, when 
the twilight has deepened so that the geraniums have 
lost their outlines behind the muslin curtains and the 
freshness of evening has begun to draw in at the win- 
dow, the door into the hall opens noisily and sounds of 
rapid footsteps, laughter, and talk can be heard. 

“Mamma!” shrieks Peter. 

Zaikin peeps out of the study and sees his wife 
Nadejda, buxom and rosy as ever. Miss Olga is with 
her, a bony blonde with large freckles, and two un- 
known men: one young and lank, with curly red hair 
and a large Adam’s apple; the other short and dumpy, 
with an actor’s clean-shaven face and a crooked, blue 
chin. 

“Natalia, light the samovar!” cries the wife, her 
dress rustling noisily. “I hear that the master has 
come home! Paul, where are you? Good evening, 
Paul!” she says, and runs panting into the study. “So 
you’ve come? I’m so glad! Two of our amateurs 
have come home with me; come, I'll introduce you 
to them! There, the tallest one, yonder, is Koromis- 
loff; he sings divinely; the other, the little one, is a 
certain Smerkaloff; he’s an actor by profession and 
recites most wonderfully! Whew! I’m so tired! We 
have just had a rehearsal. Everything’s going finely. 


174 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


We are giving ‘The Lodger with the Trombone’ and 
‘She Expects Him.’ The performance will be day after 
to-morrow i 

“Why did you bring them here?” 

“I simply had to, dear. We must go through our 
roéles once more after tea and sing a song, too. Koro- 
misloff and I are singing a duet together. Oh, I nearly 
forgot! Dearie, do send Natalia for some sardines 
and vodka and cheese and things—they will probably 
stay to supper, too. Oh, how tired I am!” 

“H’m. I haven’t any money!” 

“Oh, really, dear, how can you? How awkward! 
Don’t make it embarrassing for me!” 

In half an hour Natalia has been sent for vodka and 
other delicacies, and Zaikin, having drunk his fill of 
tea and eaten a whole loaf of French bread, has retired 
to his bedroom and lain down on the bed, while Nadejda 
and her guests, with laughter and noise, have once more 
fallen to rehearsing their réles. Paul listens for a long 
time to the hideous recitations of Koromisloff and the 
theatrical shouts of Smerkaloff. The recitations are 
followed by a long conversation, which is rent by the 
shrieking laughter of Miss Olga. Smerkaloff, by right 
of being a real actor, is explaining their réles to them 
with heat and assurance. 

Next follows a duet, and after the duet comes the 
clattering of dishes. In his dreams Zaikin hears Smer- 
kaloff reciting “The Sinner,” hears him beginning to 
rant as he struts before his audience. He hisses, he 


NOT WANTED 175 
beats his breast, he weeps, he guffaws in a hoarse bass 


voice. 

Zaikin groans and buries his head under the blanket. 

“You have a long way to go, and it’s dark,” he hears 
his wife’s voice saying an hour.later. “Why don’t you 
spend the night with us? Koromisloff can sleep here in 
the drawing-room on the sofa, and you, Smerkaloff, can 
have Peter’s bed. Peter can go in my husband’s study. 
Do stay!” 

As the clock strikes two silence falls at last. Then 
the bedroom door opens, and Nadejda appears. 

“Paul, are you asleep?” she whispers. 

“No, what do you want?” 

“Darling, go to your study and lie down on the sofa 
there, I want to put Miss Olga into your bed. Go, dear! 
I would put her in the study, but she is afraid to sleep 
alone. Do get up!” 

Zaikin gets up, throws a dressing-gown over his 
shoulders, seizes a pillow, and crawls into the study. 
Feeling his way to the sofa, he strikes a match and - 
sees Peter lying on it! The boy is awake and is gazing 
with wide eyes at the flame. 

“Papa, why don’t mosquitoes go to sleep at night?” 
he inquires. 

“‘Because—because,” mutters Zaikin, “because you 
and I are not wanted here. We haven’t even a place to 
sleep!” 

“Papa, why does Miss Olga have freckles on her 


face?” 


176 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“Oh, shut up! I’m tired of you!” 

After a few moments’ reflection Zaikin dresses and 
steps out into the road to get some fresh air. He looks 
up at the grey morning sky, the motionless clouds, hears 
the lazy cry of a sleepy rail, and muses on the morrow, 
when, in town once more, he will return after the day’s 
business and throw himself down to sleep. All at 
once there appears from round the corner the form of a 
man. 

“The watchman, no doubt,” thinks Zaikin. 

But as they catch sight of one another and approach 
more closely he recognises yesterday’s acquaintance of 
the carroty-red trousers. 

“What, not asleep?”’ he asks. 

““No, I somehow can’t sleep,” sigh the red trousers. 
“TIT am enjoying nature. A beloved guest came to 
stay with us, you know, on the night train—my wife’s 
mamma. My nieces came with her; such fine little 
girls! I am delighted, although—it is rather damp. 
And you, too, are enjoying nature?” 

“Yes,” bellows Zaikin, “I, too, am enjoying— I 
say, don’t you know some—isn’t there any bar or some- 
thing of the sort near here?” 

The red trousers raise their eyes to heaven in pro- 
found meditation. 


THE ROBBERS 


RGUNOFF, the doctor’s assistant, was a man of 

frivolous character who had the reputation in 

the district of a windbag and a great drinker. One 

evening before Christmas he was returning from the 

hamlet of Repin with some purchases for the hospital. 

To bring him back more quickly, the doctor had lent 
him his very best horse. 

At first the weather was fair, but toward eight 
o'clock a violent snow-storm sprang up and, with some 
seven versts more to go, Ergunoff completely lost his 
way. 

He did not know which way to guide the horse, as 
the road was strange, so he went on at random wher- 
ever his fancy led him, hoping that the horse would 
find the way home. Two hours passed; the horse 
was exhausted and he himself was freezing. He im- 
agined he was going back to Repin instead of toward 
home, when he suddenly heard the faint barking of a 
dog above the noise of the storm and saw a dim red 
light ahead. A high gate and a long wooden fence 
surmounted by a bristling row of spikes gradually ap- 
peared; behind them rose the crooked windlass of a 
well. The wind swept aside the clouds of snow and a 

177 


178 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


squat little cottage with a high roof took shape around 
the ruddy light. Of its three windows, one had a red 
curtain hanging before it and behind this a light was 
burning. 

What was this dwelling? The doctor remembered 
that there was said to be an inn, formerly owned by 
Andrew Tchirikoff, lying to the right of the road some 
six or seven versts from the hospital. He remembered, 
too, that Tchirikoff had been murdered by carriers not 
long since, leaving behind him an old wife and a 
daughter, Liubka, who had come to the hospital for 
medicine two years ago. The house had an evil rep- 
utation, and to come there late in the evening, and with 
somebody else’s horse, too, was not unfraught with 
danger. | 

But there was nothing else to be done now; the 
doctor felt for the revolver in his saddle-bag, coughed 
sternly, and knocked on the window with his whip. 

“Hey! Is any one there?” he shouted. “Let me in 
to warm myself, good woman!” 

With a hoarse bark a black dog whirled out under 
the feet of his horse, then came a white one, then 
another black one—a whole dozen of them. The doc- 
tor picked out the biggest, brandished his whip, and 
brought it down with all his might across the dog’s 
back. The little, long-legged cur threw up its sharp 
muzzle and gave a thin, piercing howl. 

The doctor stood and knocked a long time at the 
window. At last a light glowed on the frosted trees 


THE ROBBERS 179 


near the house, the gate creaked, and the muffled form 
of a woman appeared with a lantern in her hand. 

“Let me in to warm myself, granny!” cried the 
doctor. “I am on my way to the hospital and have 
lost the road. This weather is frightful. Don’t be 
afraid; I am a friend.” 

“Our friends are all inside and we don’t want any 
strangers,” answered the form roughly. “Why do 
you knock when you don’t have to? The gate isn’t 
locked.” 

The doctor entered the yard and stopped on the 
threshold of the house. 

“Tell some one to look after my horse, old woman,” 
he said. , 

“T am not an old woman,” said the figure, and, in- 
deed, this was so. Her face was lit for an instant as 
she blew out the lantern, and the doctor saw her black 
eyes and recognised Liubka. 

“T can’t get a man now,” she said as she went into 
the house. “Some are drunk and asleep and the oth- 
ers have been away in Repin since morning. This is 
a holiday.” 

While tying his horse in the shed, Ergunoff heard 
whinnying and made out another horse in the dark- 
ness. He put out his hand and felt a Cossack saddle. 
This meant that there was some one besides the two 
women in the house. In any case, the doctor unsad- 
dled his horse and took his saddle and purchases in 
with him. 


180 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


The first room he entered was almost empty. The 
air was hot and smelled of freshly scrubbed boards. At 
a table under the icons sat a small, thin peasant of 
forty with a little red beard and wearing a blue shirt. 
It was Kalashnikoff, a notorious ruffian and horse 
thief, whose father and uncle kept a tavern at Bogo- 
lofka where they carried on a trade in stolen horses. 
He had been to the hospital more than once, not for 
medicine but to talk about horses with the doctor. 
Hadn’t his honour the doctor a horse for sale? And 
wouldn’t he trade the brown mare for the dun gelding? 
To-night he had plastered his hair with pomade and 
silver earrings shone in his ears—he was in holiday 
garb. Frowning, his lower lip hanging, he was atten- 
tively studying a large, untidy picture-book. Stretched 
on the floor by the stove lay another peasant; his 
face, shoulders, and chest were covered with a fur 
coat; he seemed to be asleep. Two pools of melted 
snow lay at his feet which were shod in new boots with 
shining steel under the heels. 

Kalashnikoff greeted the doctor as he caught sight 
of him. 

“What awful weather!” answered Ergunoff, rubbing 
his cold knees with his hands. “The snow has gone 
down my neck, and I am wet through, and I think my 
revolver——”’ 

He took out his revolver, looked at it from all sides, 
and put it back in the saddle-bag; but it did not make 
the slightest impression; the peasant went on looking 
at his book. 


THE ROBBERS 181 


“Yes, this is awful weather. I lost my way, and if 
it had not been for the dogs here I should have been 
frozen to death. Where are the keepers of the inn?” 

“The old woman has gone to Repin. The girl is 
getting supper,” answered Kalashnikoff. 

Silence fell. The doctor, all huddled up, shivered 
and grunted, blew on his hands, and pretended to be 
dreadfully frozen and miserable. The excited dogs 
still howled in the yard. The silence grew wearisome. 

“You come from Bogolofka, don’t you?” asked the 
doctor severely. 

“Yes, from Bogolofka,” answered the peasant. 

Because he had nothing better to do, the doctor 
began to think about Bogolofka. It is a large village 
lying in a deep ravine, and to any one travelling along 
the highroad at night, looking down into the dark 
gorge and then up at the sky, it seems as if the moon 
were hanging over a bottomless abyss and as if this 
were the jumping-off place of the earth. The road 
leading down is so steep, so winding and narrow, that 
when he was called to Bogolofka during an epidemic, 
or to vaccinate the people for smallpox, the doctor 
would have to whistle and shout with all his might the 
whole way down, for to pass a wagon on that road was 
impossible. 

The peasants of Bogolofka enjoy a great reputation 
as gardeners and horse thieves; their orchards are 
magnificent, and in the springtime the whole village is 
sunk in a sea of white cherry blossoms. In summer a 


182 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


bucketful of cherries can be had for three copecks— 
you just pay your money and help yourself. The men 
and women are handsome and prosperous. They love 
finery and do nothing, not even on working days, but 
sit on their beds and clean one another’s heads. 

But now, at last, footsteps were heard and Liubka 
came in. She was a young girl of twenty, barefoot and 
in ared dress. She cast a sidelong glance at the doctor 
and crossed the room twice from corner to corner, not 
walking simply but mincing and throwing out her chest; 
it was obvious that she liked to shuffle her bare feet on 
the freshly scrubbed boards and had taken off her shoes 
and stockings on purpose to do it. 

Kalashnikoff burst out laughing and beckoned her to 
him; she went to the table and he pointed to a picture 
of the prophet Elijah driving a span of three horses to 
heaven. Liubka rested her elbows on the table and 
her long, red-brown braid, tied at the end with a bit of 
red ribbon, fell across her shoulder and hung almost to 
the floor. She, too, laughed. 

“What a perfectly beautiful picture!” exclaimed 
Kalashnikoff. ‘“‘ Beautiful!” he repeated, and made a 
motion as if he wanted to take the reins into his own 
hands. | 

The wind rumbled in the stove; something growled 
and squealed there as if a large dog were killing a rat. 

“The evil ones are going by!” said Liubka. 

“That was the wind,” said Kalashnikoff. He was 
silent for a while and then raised. his eyes to the doc- 


THE ROBBERS 183 


tor’s face and asked: “‘According to you, sir, accord- 
ing to the ideas of educated people, are there any 
devils in the world or not?” 

“What shall I say, old man?” answered the doc- 
tor, shrugging one shoulder. “Of course, scientifically 
speaking, devils don’t exist because they are only a 
superstition, but, talking it over simply, as you and I 
are doing, I should say that they did. I have been 
through a great deal in my life. After finishing school 
I decided to be a doctor in a dragoon regiment, and of 
course I went to the war and have received the Red 
Cross medal. After the peace of San Stefano I came 
back to Russia and entered the civil service. I can 
truthfully say that I have seen more marvels in my 
roving life than most people have seen in their dreams, 
and so, of course, I have met devils too, not devils with 
horns and tails—they are all nonsense—but devils 
something on that order——” 

“Where?” asked Kalashnikoff. 

“In various places. Though it shouldn’t be men- 
tioned at night, I met one right here once, near this 
very house. I was on my way to Golishino to do some 
vaccinating, driving along in a racing cart. I had my 
instruments with me, and my watch and so forth, and 
then the horse and all—well, I was hurrying along at 
a smart pace; you never can tell what might happen 
with so many tramps about. I had got as far as that 
confounded Snaky Hollow and had started going down 
when I suddenly saw some one coming toward me. 


184 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


His hair and eyes were black and his whole face was 
black as soot. He went straight up to my horse, took 
hold of the left rein, and ordered me to stop. He 
looked at the horse and then at me, and then threw 
down the rein and, without any suspicious words, 
said: ‘Where are you going?’ But he was grinning 
and his eyes looked wicked. ‘You're a sly bird!’ I 
thought, and answered, ‘I am going to do some vac- 
cinating. What business is it of yours?’ ‘If that’s so,’ 
_said he, ‘you can vaccinate me,’ and with that he bared 
his arm and thrust it under my nose. Of course I 
didn’t argue with him. I just vaccinated him then and 
there to get rid of him. When I looked at my lancet 
afterward it was all rusty.” 

The peasant who had been lying asleep by the stove 
suddenly turned over and threw off his coat, and, to his 
great surprise, the doctor recognised the stranger whom 
he had encountered in Snaky Hollow. The man’s 
hair, eyebrows, and eyes were black as coal, his face 
was swarthy, and in addition he had a black spot the 
size of a lentil on his right cheek. He looked mockingly 
at the doctor and said: 

“I took hold of the left rein, that is true, but you 
are raving about the vaccination, mister. We never 
even mentioned smallpox.” 

The doctor was embarrassed. “I wasn’t talking 
about you,” he said. “Lie TEN since that’s what 
you were doing.” 

The dark peasant had never been to the hospital, and 


THE ROBBERS 185 


the doctor did not know who he was nor where he came 
from, but now, observing him, he decided that he must 
be a gipsy. The man got up, yawned loudly, and, 
sitting down beside Liubka and Kalashnikoff at the 
table, began looking at the pictures. Jealousy and 
emotion were depicted on his sleepy face. 

“There, Merik!” Liubka said to him. “If you'll 
bring me some horses like those Ill go to heaven!” 

“Sinners can’t go to heaven,” said Kalashnikoff. 
“Heaven is for the saints.” 

Liubka got up and began to lay the table. She 
fetched a great chunk of hog’s fat, some salted cucum- 
bers, a wooden plate of boiled beef, and finally a pan in 
which a sausage and cabbage were frying. There also 
appeared on the table a glass decanter of vodka which, 
when it was poured out, filled the room with the scent 
of orange-peel. 

The doctor felt angry with Kalashnikoff and the dark 
Merik for talking together all the time without taking 
any more notice of him than if he had not been in the 
room. He wanted to talk and brag and drink and eat 
his fill, and if possible to romp with Liubka, who had 
sat down beside him and got up five times during supper 
and, with her hands on her broad hips, nudged him as 
if accidentally with her handsome shoulders. She was 
a lusty, merry wench, boisterous, and never still for an 
instant. She was continually sitting down and then 
jumping up again, and when she sat down beside you 
would turn first her breast and then her back toward 


186 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


you, like a naughty child, invariably jostling you with 
her elbow or knee. 

The doctor didn’t like it, either, that the peasants 
drank only one glass of vodka apiece and then stopped. 
It was awkward to drink alone, but at last he could 
resist it no longer and took a second glass, then a 
third, and then ate the whole sausage. He decided to 
flatter the peasants so that they would stop holding 
him at a distance and take him into their company. 

“You are great fellows at Bogolofka,”’ he said, wag- 
ging his head. 

“How do you mean?” asked Kalashnikoff. 

“Well, about horses; you are experts at stealing.” 

“That was in the old days,” said Merik after a 
pause. “Not one of the old crowd is left now but 
Filia, and his hair is grey.” 

“Yes, only old Filia,” sighed Kalashnikoff. “He 
must be seventy now. The German immigrants put 
out one of his eyes and he is almost blind in the other. 
He has a cataract. Whenever the police saw him in 
the old days they used to call out, ‘Hello, Shamil!’ * 
and all the peasants called him Shamil, too, but now 
it’s only ‘One-eyed Filia.” What a great chap he used 
to be! He and Andrew Grigoritch and I met one 
night near Rogovna, where a regiment of cavalry was 
encamped, and drove away ten of the best horses in 
the regiment, and the sentries never suspected a thing. 
Next morning we sold the whole bunch to Afonka, the 


* A famous Circassian chieftain. 


THE ROBBERS 187 


gipsy, for twenty roubles. Yes, sir! But thieves these 
days don’t rob a man unless he’s either drunk or asleep, 
and without fear of God will even pull off his boots if 
he’s drunk; and then they go ten versts with the horse, 
scared to death all the time, and haggle with the Jews 
at the bazaar till the police nab them, the fools! That 
kind of thing isn’t a spree, it’s a mess! They’re a rot- 
ten lot, and that’s the truth.” 

“What about Merik?” asked Liubka. 

“Merik isn’t one of us,” Kalashnikoff answered. 
“He comes from Kharkoff. He’s a fine fellow, there’s 
no doubt about that; he’s all right, is Merik.” 

Liubka glanced slyly and gaily at Merik and said: 

“Tt wasn’t for nothing they dipped him in the ice 
hole!” 

“How was that?” asked the doctor. 

“This way,” answered Merik with a grin. “Filia 
once stole three horses belonging to the Samoiloff 
tenants, and their suspicions fell on me. There were 
ten tenants on the place—thirty men in all, counting 
the workmen—all big, husky fellows. Well, one of 
_ them comes up to me at the bazaar one day and says: 
“Come on, Merik, and see the new horses we’ve brought 
from the fair!’ I want to see them, of course, so off I 
go to where the fellows are, all thirty of them. They 
grabbed me and tied my hands behind my back, and 
led me down to the river. One hole in the ice had al- 
ready been made; they cut another about ten feet 
away. ‘Come on!’ they said. ‘We'll show you the 


188 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


horses.” Then they made a noose out of rope and 
fastened it under my arms, tied a crooked pole to the 
other end, long enough to reach from hole to hole, 
pushed it into the water, and pulled. Down I went 
—splash!—just as I was, fur coat, boots, and all. They 
stood and prodded me and kicked me, and finally 
dragged me under the ice and out through the other 
hole.” 

Liubka shivered and shrank together. 

** At first the cold threw me into a glow,”’ Merik con- 
tinued, “but when they pulled me out, my strength had 
all gone, and I lay helpless on the snow while the fel- 
lows stood over me and beat my knees and elbows 
with sticks. It hurt like the mischief. When they 
had finished thrashing me they went away. And now 
everything on me began to freeze; my clothes turned 
into a block of ice. I raised myself and fell down 
again. Then—thank goodness!—a woman came by 
and took me away with her.” 

During this story the doctor had drunk five or six 
glasses of vodka, and his heart was growing merry. 
He, too, wanted to tell some wonderful yarn to show 
that he was as brave a fellow as they were and afraid 
of nothing. 

“Once, in the province of Penza—”’ he began, but, 
because he had drunk a great deal and perhaps also 
because they had caught him telling a lie, the peasants 
paid no attention to him, and even stopped answer- 
ing his questions. Worse than that: they completely 


U 


THE ROBBERS 189 


ignored his presence and launched into such open- 
hearted confidences that his blood ran cold and his 
hair stood straight on end. 

Kalashnikoff’s manner was staid, as became a sober- 
minded man of his position. He spoke authoritatively 
and made the sign of the cross over his mouth whenever 
he yawned. No one would have suspected him of being 
a brigand, a merciless brigand, the scourge of the un- 
fortunate, a man who had been in jail twice and who 
would have been sent to Siberia had not his father and 
uncle, thieves like himself, bought him off. Merik 
swaggered like a young dandy. He saw that Liubka 
and Kalashnikoff were admiring him and thought him- 
self a very fine fellow; so he stuck his arms akimbo, 
threw out his chest, and stretched himself till the bench 
cracked. 

After supper Kalashnikoff said a short prayer before 
the icon without getting up and shook hands with 
Merik; Merik, too, said a prayer and returned the 
hand-shake. Liubka cleared away the remains of the 
supper, scattered gingerbread cakes, roasted nuts, and 
pumpkin-seeds on the table, and brought out two 
bottles of sweet wine. 

“Eternal peace to the soul of Andrew Grigoritch!” 
said Kalashnikoff, and he and Merik touched glasses. 
“We used to meet here or at my brother Martin’s when 
he was alive, and, Lord, Lord, what fellows we were! 
What talks we had! Such wonderful talks! There 
were Martin and Filia and noisy Theodore; every- 


190 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


thing was so pleasant and nice; and, heavens, what 
sprees we used to go on! Oh, what sprees!” 

Liubka went out and came back in a few minutes 
with a string of beads around her neck and a green 
kerchief on her head. 

“Merik, look what Kalashnikoff brought me to- 
day!” she cried. 

She looked at herself in the glass and nodded her 
head so that the beads tinkled. Then she opened the 
chest and took out first a cotton dress with red and 
blue spots, then another with flounces that rustled and 
crackled like paper, and lastly a blue kerchief shot with 
the colours of the rainbow. These she showed, laugh- 
ing and clapping her hands as if amazed at owning so 
many treasures. 

Kalashnikoff tuned a balalaika ee began to play, 
and the doctor could not for the lrfe of him make out 
whether the tune were merry or sad; at times it was so 
dreadfully sad that it made him want to cry, and then 
the next moment it was gay. Merik suddenly jumped 
up, beat on the floor with his iron-shod boots, and 
then, spreading his arms, crossed the room on his heels 
from the table to the stove and from the stove to the 
chest. Here he leaped up as if he had been stung, 
clapped his feet in the air, dropped down, and, sitting 
on his heels, danced helter-skelter across the floor. 

Liubka waved both arms, gave a despairing shriek, 
and followed after him. She danced sideways at first, 
stealthily, as if trying to steal up on some one and hit 


THE ROBBERS 191 


him from behind; then she drummed with her heels as 
Merik did, spun round like a top, and dropped down 
so that her red dress floated up about her like a bell. 
Looking at her fiercely, and showing his teeth, Merik 
danced toward her, crouching on his heels, as if longing 
to destroy her with his terrible feet; but she jumped up, 
threw back her head, and, waving her arms as a great 
bird flaps its wings, flew about the room, hardly touch- 
ing the floor. 

‘What a glorious girl!” sighed the doctor, sitting on 
the chest and watching the dancers. “All lightning 
and fire! What would I not give—” and he wished he 
were a peasant instead of a doctor. whF did he wear 
a coat and a chain with a gilt key and not a blue shirt 
and a rope girdle? Then he might sing boldly and 
dance and throw his arms around Liubka as Merik did. 

The fierce stam, ing and yelling and huzzaing rattled 
the dishes in the cupboard, the candle flame leaped and 
flickered. 

The string broke around Liubka’s neck, and the beads 
scattered across the floor; her kerchief slipped from her 
head, and, instead of a girl, all that could be seen was a 
red cloud and the flash of dark eyes. As for Merik, it 
looked as if every instant his arms and legs would fly 
off. 

But now he struck the floor for the last time with 
his heel and stopped as if struck by lightning. Ex- 
hausted, scarcely able to breathe, Liubka leaned against 
him and clutched him as if he had been a post. He 


192 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


threw his arms around her and, looking into her eyes, 
said tenderly and softly as if in play: 

“I’m going to find where the old woman keeps her 
money, and then I'll kill her and cut your little throat 
with a knife and set fire to the inn. Every one will 
think you were burned to death, and I'll take your 
money and go to Kuban, and there I'll herd horses 
and keep sheep.” 

Liubka did not answer anything to this, she only 
looked wistfully at Merik and said: 

“Ts it nice in Kuban, Merik?”’ 

He did not answer her but went across to the chest, 
sat down, and was lost in thought—he was probably 
dreaming of Kuban. 

“It’s time for me to go,” said Kalashnikoff. “Filia 
is probably waiting for me. Good-bye, Liubka.” 

The doctor went out to see that Kalashnikoff did 
not ride away on his horse. The storm was still raging. 
White clouds of snow, catching their long tails in the 
bushes and tall grass, swept across the yard, and on the 
far side of the fence great giants in white shrouds with 
wide sleeves whirled and fell and rose again, wrestling 
and waving their arms. What a wind there was! The 
naked birches and cherry-trees, unable to resist its 
rough caresses, bent to the ground and moaned: “For 
what sins, O Lord, hast thou fastened us to the earth, 
and why may we not fly away free?” 

“Get along!” said Kalashnikoff roughly as he 
mounted his horse. One half of the gate was open and 


THE ROBBERS 193 


a huge snow-drift had piled up beside it. “Come up, 
will you?” cried Kalashnikoff, and the little short- 
legged pony started forward and buried itself to the 
belly in the drift. Kalashnikoff was whitened with 
snow and soon he and his horse faded out of sight 
beyond the gate. 

When the doctor re-entered the house he found 
Liubka on the floor picking up her beads; Merik was 
gone. 

“What a stunning wench!” thought the doctor, 
lying down on the bench and putting his coat under 
his head. “If only Merik weren’t here!” 

It teased him to have Liubka creeping about on the 
floor near the bench, and he thought that if it weren’t 
for Merik he would certainly get up and kiss her and 
then see what would happen next. It was true that 
she was only a girl, but she could hardly be honest; and, 
even if she were, why need he be squeamish in a rob- 
ber’s den? Liubka picked up her beads and went away. 
The candle burned out, and the flame caught the bit 
of paper in the socket. The doctor laid his revolver 
and a box of matches beside him and blew out the light. 
The lamp before the icon flickered so brightly that it 
hurt his eyes; splashes of light danced across the ceil- 
ing, the floor, and the cupboard, and among them the 
doctor seemed to see Liubka, deep-chested and strong, 
now whirling like a top, now breathing heavily, ex- 
hausted with the dance. 

“Oh, if the devil would only take Merik!” he thought. 


194 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


The lamp flared up for the last time, winked and 
went out. Some one, probably Merik, came into the 
room and sat down on the bench. He pulled at his 
pipe, and his swarthy cheeks with their black spot were 
lit for a second. The vile tobacco smoke tickled the 
doctor’s throat. 

“What horrible tobacco you smoke, confound it!” 
the doctor said. “It makes me sick.” 

“IT always mix my tobacco with the flowers of oats,” 
answered Merik; “it is better for the chest.” 

He smoked, spat, and went out. Half an hour 
passed. A light flashed in the hall. Merik came back 
in his hat and coat, followed by Liubka carrying a 
candle. 

“Stay here, Merik!” she said in a beseeching voice. 

“No, Liubka, don’t detain me.” 

“Listen, Merik,” said Liubka, and her voice grew 
tender and soft, “I know you will find my mother’s 
money and kill her and me, and then go to Kuban and 
love other girls; but I don’t care. I only ask one 
thing, dearie—stay here!” 

“No, I want to be off on a spree,” said Merik, 
tightening his belt. 

“How can you go off on a spree? You came here 
on foot.” 

Merik stooped down and whispered something in 
Liubka’s ear; she looked at the door and laughed 
through her tears. | 

“The old windbag is asleep,” she said. 


THE ROBBERS 195 


Merik took her in his arms, gave her a great kiss, and 
went out-of-doors. The doctor slipped his revolver 
into his pocket, jumped up quickly, and ran after him. 

“Let me get by!” he cried to Liubka as she slammed 
and bolted the front door, planting herself in front of 
it. “Let me get by! What are you standing there 
for?” 

“Why do you want to get by?” 

“To look at my horse.” 

Liubka fixed her eyes on him with an expression both 
tender and sly. 

“Why do you want to look at your horse? Look at 
me!” she said, and bent down and touched the gold 
key on his chain with her finger. 

“Let me get by; he is going away on my horse!” 
cried the doctor. “Let me get by, damn you!” he 
shouted and struck her furiously on the shoulder as 
he threw his whole weight against her in order to shove 
her aside. But she clung to the bolt as tightly as if 
she were made of steel. 

“Let me pass!” he yelled, struggling. “I tell you 
he’s going!” 

“Nonsense! He won’t go.” She breathed heavily 
and, stroking her aching shoulder, looked him up and 
down again from head to foot, blushed, and laughed. 

“Don’t go, dearie,” she said; “I shall be lonely with- 
out you.” 

The doctor looked into her eyes, reflected, and kissed 
her. She did not resist him. 


196 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“Come! No more nonsense! Let me get by!” 

She said nothing. 

“T heard what you said to Merik just now; you love 
him!” he said. 

“That meant nothing; I know whom [I love.” 

Again she touched the little key with her finger and 
said softly: 

“Give me that!” 

The doctor took the key off the chain and gave it to 
her. She suddenly threw back her head and listened 
to something; her face became serious, and her eyes 
seemed to the doctor to grow crafty and cold. He re- 
membered his horse, pushed her aside easily, and ran 
out into the yard. A sleepy pig was grunting regularly 
and lazily in the shed, and a cow was knocking her 
horns against the walls. The doctor struck a match 
and saw them both as well as the dogs that threw 
themselves from all sides toward the light, but the 
horse had vanished. Shouting and waving his arms 
at the dogs, stumbling over snow-drifts and sinking into 
the snow, he ran out beyond the gate and stared into 
the darkness. Strain his eyes as he might he saw 
only the flying snow that was piling itself into many dif- 
ferent shapes; now it was the pale, grinning face of a 
corpse that glared out of the gloom, now a white horse 
galloped by ridden by a woman in a muslin dress, now 
a flock of white swans flew over his head. Trembling 
with cold and rage and not knowing what to do, the 
doctor fired a shot at the dogs without hitting one and 
hurried back into the house. 


THE ROBBERS 197 


As he entered the hall he distinctly heard some one 
dart out of the room and slam the door. He went in. 
All was dark. He tried a door and found it locked. 
Then, striking match after match, he ran back into 
the hall, from there into the kitchen, and from the 
kitchen into a little room where all the walls were hung 
with skirts and dresses and the air smelled of herbs 
and fennel. In a corner near the stove stood a bed 
with a whole mountain of pillows on it. This was prob- 
ably where the old woman lived. From here the doctor 
passed into another little room, and there he found 
Liubka. She was lying on a chest and was covered 
with a bright patchwork quilt. She pretended to be 
asleep. At her head hung an icon with a lamp burn- 
ing before it. 

“Where is my horse?” asked the doctor sternly. 

Liubka did not move. 

“Where is my horse, I say?” he repeated more 
sternly still and jerked the quilt off her. “Answer 
me, you she-devil!” he shouted. 

Liubka jumped up and fell on her knees, shrinking 
against the wall. With one hand she grasped her 
chemise, the other clutched at the quilt; she glared 
at the doctor with horror and fear, and, like an animal 
in a trap, her eyes craftily followed every movement 
he made. 

“Tell me where my horse is or I'll shake the life out 
of you!” he yelled. 

“Get away, you beast!” she said hoarsely. 


198 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


The doctor seized the neck of her chemise, it tore; 
then, unable to contain himself, he caught the girl in 
his arms. Hissing with rage, she slipped out of his 
embrace, and, freeing one arm—the other was caught 
in her torn chemise—she struck him on the head with 
her fist. 

The room swam before his eyes, something roared 
and thumped in his ears; as he staggered back she 
dealt him another blow, this time on the temple. 

Reeling and clutching at the doors to keep himself 
from falling, he made his way into the room where 
his things were and lay down on the bench. After 
lying still for a while he took a box of matches out of 
his pocket and struck them one by one in an aimless 
way, blowing them out and throwing them under the 
table. This he did till the matches were all gone. 

But now the darkness was fading behind the window- 
panes and the cocks were beginning to crow. Ergu- 
noff’s head still ached and he heard a roaring in his 
ears as if he were sitting under a railway bridge with 
a train going over his head. He managed somehow 
to put on his hat and coat, but his saddle and bundle 
of purchases had vanished and his saddle-bags were 
empty. It was not for nothing that some one had 
slipped out of the room as he came in the night before! 

He took a poker from the kitchen to keep off the 
dogs and went out into the yard, leaving the door ajar. 
The wind had died down; all was quiet. He went out 
at the gate. The country lay still as death; not a bird 


THE ROBBERS 199 


could be seen in the morning sky. A forest of little 
trees lay like a blue mist on either side of the road, 
as far as the eye could see. 

The doctor forced himself to think of the reception 
that awaited him at the hospital and of what his chief 
would say. He felt that he absolutely must think of 
it and decide beforehand how to answer the questions 
that would be put to him, but these thoughts grew 
vague and dispersed. He thought only of Liubka as 
he walked along and of the peasants with whom he 
had spent the night. He remembered how Liubka, 
when she struck him the second time, had stooped to 
pick up the quilt and of how her loosened braid had 
swept the floor. He grew confused and wondered why 
doctors and doctors’ assistants, merchants, clerks, and 
peasants existed in the world and not simply free 
people. Birds were free and wild animals were free, 
Merik was free—they were afraid of nothing and de- 
pendent on no one. Who had decreed that one must 
get up in the morning, have dinner at noon, and go to 
bed at night? Or that a doctor was above his assistant; 
that one must live in a house and love only one’s wife? 
Why not, on the contrary, have dinner at night and 
sleep all day? Oh, to jump on a horse without asking 
to whom it belonged and race down the wind, through 
woods and fields, to the devil! Oh, to make love to 
the girls and to snap one’s fingers at the whole world! 

The doctor dropped his poker in the snow, leaned 
his forehead against the cold, white trunk of a birch- 


200 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


tree, and thought; and his grey, monotonous life, his 
salary, his dependence, his drugs, his everlasting fuss- 
ing with bottles and flies seemed to him contemptible 
and sickening. 

“Who says it is a sin toMead a wild life?” he asked 
himself. “Those who have never known freedom as 
Merik and Kalashnikoff have! Those who have never 
loved Liubka! They are beggars all their lives; they 
love only their wives and live without joy, like frogs 
in a pond.” 

And of himself he thought that if he were not a thief 
and a ruffian yes—and a highwayman, too—it was 
only because he did not know how to be one and be- 
cause the opportunity had never come in his way. 

eas 

A year and a half passed. One spring night after 
Easter the doctor, long since dismissed from the hos- 
pital and without work, came out of a saloon in Repin 
and wandered aimlessly down the street and out into 
the open country. 

Here the air smelled of spring and a warm, caressing 
breeze was blowing. The peaceful stars looked down 
- upon the earth. How deep the sky looked, and how 
immeasurably vast, stretched across the world! ‘The 
world is well created,” thought the doctor, “but why 
aiid for what purpose do men divide themselves into 
the drunk and the sober, into workers and those who 
are out of work, and so forth? Why does the sober, 
well-fed man sleep quietly at home while the drunken, 


THE ROBBERS 201 


starving one must wander in the fields without a place 
to lay his head? Why must the man that doesn’t 
serve others for wages always go unfed, unshod, and 
in rags? Who decreed this? The birds and beasts of 
the forest don’t work for wages but live according to 
their own sweet wills.” ~ 

A splendid red light flared up over the horizon and 
spread across the sky. The doctor stood a long time 
looking at it and thought: “What if I did take a 
samovar yesterday that didn’t belong to me and throw 
away the money at the tavern? Wasthatasin? Why 
was it a sin?” 

Two wagons went by on the road; in one lay a sleep- 
ing woman, in the other sat an old man without a hat. 

“Whose house is that burning, daddy?” asked the 
doctor. 

“Andrew Tchirikoff’s inn,” answered the old man. 

Then the doctor thought of all that had happened 
to him at that inn one winter’s night a year and a half 
ago and remembered Merik’s boast; he saw in imag- 
ination Liubka and the old woman burning with their 
throats cut and envied Merik. As he went back to the 
tavern and looked at the houses of the wealthy inn- 
keepers, cattle dealers, and blacksmiths he thought: 
“How good it would be if I could make my way by 
night into some house inhabited by people who are 
still richer!” 


LEAN AND FAT 


WO friends once met in a railway station; one 

was fat and the other was lean. The fat man 
had just finished dinner at the station; his lips were 
still buttery and as glossy as ripe cherries. A perfume 
of sherry and fleurs d’oranger hung about him. The 
lean man had just stepped out of the train and was 
loaded down with hand-bags, bundles, and band- 
boxes. He smelled of ham and coffee-grounds. The 
thin little woman with a long chin who peeped out 
from behind his back was his wife and the tall school- 
boy with the half-closed eyes was his son. 

**Porfiri!”’ exclaimed the fat man as he caught sight 
of the lean one. “Is that really you? My dear old 
friend! It is an age since we last met.” 

“Good Heavens!”’ cried the lean man, astounded. 
“Misha! The friend of my childhood! Where have 
you come from?” 

The friends embraced thrice and stared at each 
other with tears in their eyes. Both were agreeably 
overcome. 

“Dear old chap!” began the lean man after the 
embrace was over. “I never expected this! What a 


surprise! Here! Look at me properly! You are the 
202 


LEAN AND FAT 203 


same handsome fellow you always were! The same old 
darling; the same old dandy! Oh, Lord, Lord! Come, 
tell me! Are yourich? Are you married? I am mar- 
ried, as you see. Here! This is my wife, Louisa, for- 
merly Vanzenbach—a Lutheran. And this is my son 
Nathaniel, in the third class at school. Nathaniel, 
this is a friend of my sa We were at school to- 
gether!” 

Nathaniel reflected and then took off his cap. 

“We were at school together!” the thin man con- 
tinued. “Do you remember how they used to tease 
you and call you Herostratus because you once burned 
a school-book with a cigarette? And how I used to be 
teased by being called Ephialtus because I used to tell 
tales on the others? What boys we were! Don’t be 
afraid, Nathaniel; come up closer! And this is my 
wife, formerly Vanzenbach—a Lutheran.” 

Nathaniel reflected and then hid himself behind his 
father’s back. 

“Well, well! And how goes the world with you, old 
fellow?” inquired the fat man, looking at his friend 
with delight. “Are you working now or have you re- 
tired?” 

“TI am working, old man. This is the second year 
that I have been a collegiate assessor, and I have been 
awarded the Order of St. Stanislas. The salary is 
small, but never mind! My wife gives music-lessons 
and I privately make cigarette cases out of wood— 
first-class cigarette cases! I sell them for one rouble 


204 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


apiece. If you take ten or more I make a reduction, 
of course. We manage to get along somehow. I 
used to be employed in one of the departments, you 
know, but I have been transferred by the administra- 
tion to this place. And how about you? You are 
probably state councilor by now, are you not?” 
“No, old man; guess higher!” said the fat man. “I 
am already privy councilor. I have two decorations.” 

The lean man suddenly paled and stood rooted to 
the spot. His face became distorted by a very broad 
smile; he shrivelled and shrank and stooped and his 
bandboxes shrivelled and grew wrinkled. His wife’s 
long chin grew still longer; Nathaniel drew himself up 
at attention and began doing up all the buttons of his 
uniform. 

“I, your Excellency—I am delighted, Iam sure. A 
friend, one may say, of one’s childhood, has all at once 
became such a great man! Hee! hee! hee!” 

“Enough of that!” said the fat man frowning. 
“Why affect such a tone? You and I are old friends; 
what’s the need of all this respect for rank?” 

“Allow me—oh, really!” tittered the lean man, 
shrivelling still smaller. “The gracious attention of 
your Excellency is something on the order of a life- 
giving dew. This, your Excellency, is my son Nathaniel. 
This is my wife, Louisa, a Lutheran—in a wa * 

The fat man wanted to retort something, but such 
obsequiousness, such mawkishness, such deferential 
acidity were written all over the lean man’s face that 


LEAN AND FAT 205 


the privy councilor was nauseated. He turned away 
from him and gave him his hand in farewell. 

The lean man took three fingers of it, bowed with 
his whole body, and giggled like a Chinaman: 

“Hee! hee! hee!” 

His wife smiled, Nathaniel scraped his foot and 
dropped his cap. All three were agreeably overcome. 


ON THE WAY 


**A golden cloud lay for a night 
On the breast of a giant crag.” 
—LERMONTOFF. 


N the room which the Cossack innkeeper, Simon 
Tchistoplui, himself calls the “ visitors’ room,” 
meaning that it is set aside exclusively for travellers, a 
tall, broad-shouldered man of forty sat at a large, un- 
painted table. His elbows were resting upon it, his head 
was propped in his hands, and he was asleep. The 
stump of a tallow candle, which was stuck in an empty 
pomade jar, lit his red beard, his broad, thick nose, his 
sunburned cheeks, and the heavy eyebrows which over- 
hung his closed eyes. Nose, cheeks, and brows—each 
feature in itself was heavy and coarse, like the furni- 
ture and the stove in the “ visitors’ room”; but, taken 
altogether, they made up a harmonious and even a 
. beautiful whole. And this is, generally speaking, the 
structure of the Russian physiognomy; the larger and 
more prominent the features, the gentler and kinder 
the face appears to be. The man was dressed in a gen- 


, tleman’s short coat, worn but bound with new braid, a 


plush waistcoat, and wide black trousers tucked into 


high boots. 
206 


ON THE WAY 207 


On one of the benches which formed a continuous 
row along the wall, on the fur of a fox-skin coat, slept 
a little girl of eight wearing a brown dress and long 
black stockings. Her face was pale, her hair was 
curly and fair, and her shoulders were narrow; her 
whole body was lithe and thin, but her nose stood out, 
a thick ugly knob, like the man’s. She was sleeping 
soundly and did not feel that the round little comb 
which she wore in her hair had slipped down and was 
pressing into her cheek. 

The “visitors’ room” wore a holiday look. The air 
smelled of its freshly scrubbed floor, the usual array of 
cloths was missing from the line which was stretched 
diagonally across the whole room, and a little shrine 
lamp was burning in a corner over the table, casting a 
red spot of light on the icon of Gregory the Bringer of 
Victory. Two rows of bad woodcuts started at the 
corner where hung the icon and stretched along either 
wall, observing in their choice of subjects a rigid and 
careful gradation from the religious to the worldly. 
By the dim light of the candle and of the little red lamp 
they looked an unbroken band covered with dark 
blotches, but when the stove drew in its breath with a 
howl, as if longing to sing in tune with the wind, and- 
the logs took heart and broke out into bright flames, 
muttering angrily, then ruddy splashes of light would 
flicker over the timbered walls and the monk Seraphim 
or the Shah Nasr-Ed-Din would start out over the head 
of the sleeping man, or a fat brown child would grow 


208 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


out of the darkness, staring and whispering something 
into the ear of an uncommonly dull and indifferent 
Virgin. 

Outside a storm was roaring. Something fiendish 
and evil but profoundly unhappy was prowling about 
the inn with the fury of a wild beast, trying to force 
its way into the house. Banging the doors, knocking 
on the windows and on the roof, tearing at the walls, 
it would first threaten, then implore, then grow silent 
awhile, and at last rush down the flue into the stove 
‘with a joyous, treacherous shriek. But here the logs 
would flare up and the flames leap furiously to meet 
the enemy like watch-dogs on the chain; a battle would 
ensue, followed by a sob, a whine, and an angry roar. 
Through it all could be heard the rancorous anguish, 
the ungratified hatred, and the bitter impotence of 
one who has once been a victor. 

It seemed as if the “ visitors’ room” must lie for ever 
spellbound by this wild, inhuman music; but at last 
the door creaked and the tavern boy came into the 
room wearing a new calico shirt. Limping and blinking 
his sleepy eyes, he snuffed the candle with his fingers, 
piled more wood on the fire, and went out. The bells 
of the church, which at Rogatch lies only a hundred 
steps from the inn, rang out for midnight. The wind 
sported with the sound as it did with the snowflakes; 
it pursued the notes and whirled them over a mighty 
space so that some were broken off short, some were 
drawn out into long, quavering tones, and some were 


ON THE WAY 209 


lost entirely in the general uproar. One peal rang out 
as clearly in the room as if it had been struck under 
the very window. The little girl that lay asleep on 
the fox skins started and raised her head. For a mo- 
ment she stared blankly at the dark window and at 
Nasr-Ed-Din, on whom the red light from the stove 
was playing, and then turned her eyes toward the 
sleeping man. 

“Papa!” she said 

But the man did not move. The child frowned 
crossly and lay down again, drawing up her legs. Some 
one yawned long and loud in the tap-room on the other 
side of the door. Soon after this came a faint sound 
of voices and the squeaking of a door pulley. Some 
one entered the house, shook off the snow, and stamped 
his felt boots with a muffled sound. 

“Who is it?” asked a lazy female voice. 

“The young lady Ilovaiskaya has come,” a bass 
voice answered. 

Again the pulley squeaked. The wind rushed nois- 
ily in. Some one, the lame boy most likely, ran to the 
door of the “visitors’ room,” coughed sata and 
touched the latch. 

“Come this way, dear young lady; come in,” said a 
woman’s singsong voice. “Everything is clean in here, 
my pretty——” 

The door flew open and a bearded peasant appeared 
on the threshold wearing the long coat of a coachman 
and bearing a large trunk on his shoulder. He was 


210 STORIES "OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


plastered with snow from his head to his feet. Behind 
him entered a little female form of scarcely half his 
height, showing neither face nor arms, muffled and 
wrapped about like a bundle and also covered with 
snow. 

A dampness as from a cellar blew from the coachman 
and the bundle toward the little girl and the candle 
flame wavered. 

“How stupid!” cried the bundle crossly. “We 
could go on perfectly well! We have only twelve more 
miles to go, through woods almost all the way, and we 
shouldn’t get lost.” 

“Lost or not lost, miss, the horses won’t go any 
farther,” answered the coachman. “Lord! Lord! 
One would think I had done it on purpose!” 

“Heaven knows where you’ve brought me to. But 
hush! There seems to be some one asleep here. Go 
away.” 

The coachman set down the trunk, at which the lay- 
ers of snow were shaken from his shoulders, emitted 
a sobbing sound from his nose, and went out. Then 
the child saw two little hands creep out of the middle 
of the bundle, rise upward, and begin angrily to un- 
wind a tangle of shawls and kerchiefs and scarfs. 
First a large shawl fell to the floor and then a hood; 
this was followed by a white knitted scarf. Having 
freed her head, the newcomer threw off her cloak and 
at once appeared half her former width. She now 
wore a long, grey coat with big buttons and bulging 


ON THE WAY 211 


pockets. From one of these she drew a paper parcel 
and from the other a bunch of large, heavy keys. 
These she laid down so carelessly that the sleeping 
man started and opened his eyes. For a minute he 
looked dully round him as if not realising where he 
was, then he threw up his head and walked across to a 
corner where he sat down. The newcomer took off 
her coat, which again narrowed her by half, pulled off 
her plush overshoes, and also sat down. 

She now no longer resembled a bundle but appeared 
as a slender brunette of twenty, slim as a little serpent, 
with a pale, oval face and curly hair. Her nose was 
long and pointed, her chin, too, was long and pointed, 
and the corners of her mouth were pointed; in conse- 
quence of all this sharpness the expression of her face, 
too, was piquant. Squeezed into a tight black dress 
with a quantity of lace at the throat and sleeves, she 
recalled some portrait of an English lady of the Mid- 
dle Ages. The grave, concentrated expression of her 
face enhanced this resemblance. 

The little brunette looked round the room, glanced 
at the man and at the child, shrugged her shoulders, 
and sat down by the window. The dark panes shook 
in the raw west wind; large snowflakes, gleaming 
whitely, fell against the glass and at once vanished, 
swept away by the blast. The wild music grew ever 
louder and louder. 

After a long period of silence the child suddenly 
turned over and, crossly rapping out each word, said: 


212 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“Lord! Lord! How unhappy I am! Unhappier 
than any one else in the world!” 

The man got up and tiptoed across to her with 
apologetic steps that ill suited his great size and his 
large beard. | 

“Can’t you sleep, darling?” he asked guiltily. 
“What do you want?” 

“TI don’t want anything. My shoulder hurts. You 
are a horrid man, papa, and God will punish you. See 
if he doesn’t!” 

“My baby, I know your shoulder hurts, but what 
can I do, darling?” said the man in the voice of a hus- 
band who has been drinking and is excusing himself to 
his stern spouse. “Your shoulder aches from travel- 
ling, Sasha. To-morrow we will reach our journey’s 
end, and then you can rest and the pain will all go 
away.” 

“To-morrow, to-morrow! Every day you say to- 
morrow. We’re going to travel for twenty days more!” 

“But, my child, I promise you we will get there to- 
morrow. I never tell a story, and it is not my fault 
that this snow-storm has delayed us.” 

“T can’t stand it any more! I can’t! I can’t!” 

Sasha rapped her foot sharply and rent the air with 
shrill, unpleasant wails. Her father made a helpless 
gesture and glanced in confusion at the little brunette. 
The girl shrugged her shoulders fed went irresolutely 
toward Sasha. 

“Listen, darling,” she said, “Why do you cry? I 


ON THE WAY 213 
know it is horrid to have an aching shoulder, but what 


can we do?” 

“You see, madam,” said the man hastily, “we have 
not slept for two nights and have been travelling in a 
terrible carriage, so of course it is natural that she 
should feel ill and distressed. And then, too, we have 
struck a drunken driver, and our trunk has been stolen, 
and all the time we have had this snow-storm. But 
what’s the use of crying? The fact is, this sleeping in a 
sitting position has tired me. I feel as if I were drunk. 
For Heaven’s sake, Sasha, it’s sickening enough in this 
place as it is, and here you are crying!” 

The man shook his head, waved his hand in despair, 
and sat down. 

“Of course, one ought not to cry,” said the little 
brunette. “Only little babies cry. If you are ill, 
darling, you had best get undressed and go to sleep. 
Come, let’s get undressed!” 

When the child had been undressed and quieted 
silence once more reigned. The dark girl sat by the 
window and looked about the room, at the icon, and 
at the stove in perplexity. It was obvious that the 
place, the child with its thick nose and boy’s shirt, and 
the child’s father all appeared strange to her. This 
odd man sat in his corner as if he were drunk, looked off 
to one side, and rubbed his face with the palm of his 
hand. He sat silent and blinked, and any one seeing 
his apologetic appearance would hardly have expected 
him to begin talking in a few minutes. But he was 


214 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


the first to break silence. He stroked his knees, 
coughed, and began: 

“What a comedy this is, I declare! I look about 
me and can hardly believe my eyes. Why, in the name 
of mischief, should Fate have driven us into this infernal 
inn? What was meant by it? Life sometimes makes 
such a salto mortale that one is fairly staggered with 
perplexity. Have you far to go, madam?” 

“No, not far,” answered the girl. “I am on my way 
from our estate, which is twenty miles from here, to our 
farm where my father and brother are. My name is 
Tlovaiskaya and our farm is called [lovaiski, too. It is 
twelve miles from here. What terrible weather!” 

“Tt couldn’t be worse.” 

The lame boy entered the room and stuck a fresh 
candle-end into the pomade jar. 

“Here, you might bring us a samovar as quick as 
you can!” the man said to him. 

“Who wants to drink tea now?” the lame boy 
laughed. “It’s a sin to drink before the morning ser- 
vice.” 

“Never mind, be quick. We shall burn in hell for 
it, not you.” 

Over their tea the new acquaintances fell into con- 
versation. Ilovaiskaya discovered that her companion 
was called Gregory Likarieff; that he was a brother 
of the Likarieff who was marshal of the nobility in one 
of the neighbouring counties; that he himself had once 
been a landowner, but had been ruined. Likarieff 


ON THE WAY Q15 


learned that Tlovaiskaya’s name was Maria, that her 
father’s estate was a very large one, and that she had 
the entire charge of it herself, as her father and brother 
were too easy-going and were far too much addicted to 
coursing. 

“My father and brother are all, all alone on the farm,” 

said Ilovaiskaya, twiddling her fingers. (She had a 
habit of moving her fingers before her piquant face 
when she was speaking, and of moistening her lips 
with her pointed little tongue at the end of each sen- 
tence.) “‘Men are careless creatures and never will 
raise a finger to help themselves. I wonder who will 
give my father and brother their breakfast after this 
fast. We have no mother, and the servants we have 
won’t even lay the table-cloth straight without me. 
You can imagine the position my father and brother 
are in. They will find themselves without food to 
break their fast with while I have to sit here all night. 
How strange it all is!” 

Ilovaiskaya shrugged her shoulders, sipped her tea, 
and continued: 

“There are some holidays that have a scent of their 
own. At Easter and Christmas and gn Trinity Sunday 
the air always smells of something unusual. Even un- 
believers love these holidays. My brother, for in- 
stance, says that there is no God, yet on Easter Sunday 
he is always the first to run to the vigil service.” 

Likarieff raised his eyes to [lovaiskaya’s face and 
laughed. 


216 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“They say there is no God,” the girl continued and 
laughed, too. “But tell me, why do all great writers 
and students and all wise people in general believe 
in God at the end of their lives?” 

“If a man has not been able to believe in his youth, 
my lady, he will not believe in his old age, were he 
never so many times a great writer.” 

Judging from the sound of his cough, Likarieff pos- 
sessed a bass voice, but, whether from fear of talking 
loud or whether from excessive timidity, he now spoke 
ina high one. After a short silence he sighed and said: 

“My idea is this, that faith is a gift of the soul. 
It is like any other talent: one must be born with it 
to possess it. Judging from my own case, from the 
people I have known in my life, and from all I have 
seen going on about me, I believe this talent to be in- 
herent in Russians in the highest degree. Russian life 
is made up of a constant succession of beliefs and en- 
thusiasms and Russians have not yet scented unbelief 


/ and negation. If a Russian doesn’t believe in God _ 


then he believes ‘in something else,” 
~ Likarieff accepted a cup of tea from Ilovaiskaya, 
swallowed half of it at a gulp, and went on: 

“*T will tell you how it is with me. Nature has placed 
in my soul an unusual faculty for believing. Between 
you and me, half of my life has been spent in the ranks 
of the atheists and nihilists, and yet there has never 
been an hour when I have not believed. All talents, 
as a rule, make their appearance in early childhood, 


ON THE WAY 217 


and my gift showed itself when I could still walk up- 
right under the table. My mother used to like to have 
her children eat a great deal, and when she was feeding 
me she used to say: 

***Eat! Soup is the most important thing in life!’ 
I believed it. I ate soup ten times a day. I ate likea 
wolf till I swooned with loathing. When my nurse told 
me fairy-stories I believed in hobgoblins and demons 
and every kind of deviltry. I used to steal corrosive 
sublimate from my father and sprinkle it on little 
cakes and spread them out in the attic to poison the 
house sprites. But when I learned how to read and 
could understand the meaning of what I read I kept 
the whole province in an uproar. I started to run away 
to America; I turned highwayman; I tried to enter 
a monastery; I hired little boys to crucify me as if I 
were Christ. You will notice that my beliefs were all 
active and never lifeless. If I started for America I 
did not go alone, but seduced some fool like myself, 
and I was glad when I froze outside the walls of the 
town and got a thrashing. If I turned highwayman 
I invariably came home with a face all beaten up. I 
had an extremely agitated childhood, I can assure you! 
And then, when I was sent to school and had such 
truths instilled into me as that, for instance, the earth 
revolves round the sun, or that white light is not white 
but is made up of seven different colours, then how my 
little brain did hum! Everything was in a whirl in my 
head now: Joshua arresting the sun in its course, 


° 


218 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


my mother denying the existence of lightning-rods on 
the authority of the prophet Elijah, my father indif- 
ferent to the truths I had discovered. My own in- 
sight stifled me. Like one insane, I roved through the © 
house and stables preaching my truths, overcome with 
horror at the sight of ignorance and burning with 
indignation toward all those who in white light saw 
only white—but all that is childish nonsense. My se- 
rious enthusiasms began when I was at the university. 
Have you ever taken a course of learning anywhere, 
madam?” 
“Yes, in Novotcherkass, at the Donski Institute.” 

_ “But you have never followed a course of lectures? 
Then you probably don’t know what a science is. 
Every science in the world must possess one and the 
same passport, without which it is senseless; it must 
aspire to the truth. Every one of them, down to 
pharmaceutics even, has its object, and this object 
is not to bring usefulness or comfort into life but to 
seek the truth. It is wonderful! When you set to 
work to learn a science it is the beginning which 
first astounds you. Believe me, there is nothing more 
splendid, more captivating, nothing that so stuns and 
grips the human soul as the beginnings of a science. 
After the first five or six lectures the highest hopes 
beckon you on. You already fancy yourself the master 
of truth. And I gave myself up to science, heart and 
soul, as passionately as I would give myself to a be- 
loved woman. I was its slave, and there was no sun 


ON THE WAY 219 


for me but science. Night and day I pored and howled 
over my books without raising my head, weeping when 
I saw people exploiting science for their own personal 
ends. The joke is that every science, like a recurring 
decimal, has a beginning and no end. Zoology has 
discovered thirty-five thousand five hundred different 
species of insects; chemistry can count sixty-five ele- 
ments; if you were to add ten zeros to the right of each 
of these figures, zoology and chemistry would be no 
nearer the end of their labours than they are now; all 
contemporary scientific work consists in exactly this 
augmentation of numbers. I saw through that hocus- 
pocus when I discovered the three thousand five hun- 
dred and first species and still did not attain content- 
ment. However, I had no time for disillusionment, for 
I soon fell a prey to a new passion. I plunged into 
nihilism with its manifestos, its secret transformations, 
and all its tricks of the trade. I went among the peo- 
ple; I worked in factories, as a painter, as a boatman 
on the river Volga. Then, as I roamed across Russia 
and the scent of Russian life came to my nostrils, I 
changed into its ardent worshipper. My heart ached 
_ with love for the Russian people. I believed in their 
God, in their language, in their creative power, and 
so on and so on. I have been a Slavophil and have 
wearied Aksakoff with letters; I have been an Ukrain- 
ophil, and an archeologist, and a collector of examples 
of native genius—I have fallen in love with ideas, with 
people, with events, with places, time upon time with- 


220 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


out end. Five years ago I was the slave of the denial 
of the right of ownership. Non-opposition of evil was 
my latest belief.” 

Sasha stirred and heaved a shuddering sigh. Li- 
karieff rose and went to her. 

“Do you want some tea, my little one?” he asked 
tenderly. 

“Drink it yourself!” the child answered roughly. 
Likarieff was embarrassed and returned guiltily to the 
table. 

“So you have had an amusing life,” said Ilovais- 
kaya. “You have much to remember.” 

“Well, yes, it all seems amusing when one is sitting 
over one’s tea gossiping with a sweet companion, but 
figure to yourself what that amusement has cost me! 
What has it led to? You see, I did not believe ‘zier- 
lich-manierlich’ like a German doctor of philosophy: I 
did not live in a desert; every passion of mine bowed 
me under its yoke and tore my body limb from limb. 
Judge for yourself. I used tobe as rich as my brothers, 
and now I am a beggar. On the offspring of my en- 
thusiasms I have squandered my own fortune, that of 
my wife, and a great deal of the money of others. I 
am now forty-two, old age is upon me, and I am as 
homeless as a dog that has strayed at night from a 
train of wagons. I have never in my life known what 
peace is. My soul has always been weary and has 
suffered even from hoping. I have wasted away under 
this heavy, disorderly labour; I have endured priva- 


ON THE WAY 221 


tions; I have been five times to prison; I have trailed 
all over the provinces of Archangel and Tobolsk. I 
ache to remember it. I have lived, and in the fumes 
that enveloped me I have missed life itself. Can you 
believe it? I cannot recall one single spring; I did not 
notice that my wife loved me; I did not notice when 
my children were born. What else can I tell you? To 
all who have loved me I have brought misfortune. My 
mother has already worn mourning for me for fifteen 
years; my proud brothers, for my sake, have endured 
agonies of soul and blushed for me and hung their 
heads, and have wasted their money on me till at last 
they have come to hate me like poison.” 

Likarieff rose and then sat: down again. 

“Tf I alone were unhappy I would give thanks to 
God,” he continued without looking at Tovaiskaya. 
“My own personal happiness vanishes into the back- 
ground when I remember how often in my passions I 
have been absurd, unjust, cruel, dangerous, far from 
the truth! How often I have hated and despised with 
my whole soul those whom I should have loved, and— 
on the contrary! I have changed a thousand times. 
To-day I believe and prostrate myself, to-morrow I run 
like a coward from my gods and my friends of to-day, 
silently swallowing the charge of dastard that is flung 
after me. God only knows how often I have wept and 
gnawed my pillow for shame at my enthusiasms! I 
have never in my life wittingly told a lie or done an 
evil deed, but my conscience is not clear; no, I cannot 


222 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


even boast of not having a death on my mind, for my 
wife died under my very eyes, exhausted by my restless- 
ness. Listen! ‘There now exist in society two ways 
of regarding women. Some men measure the female 
skull and prove in that way that woman is the inferior 
of man; they seek out her defects in order to deride 
her, in order to appear original in her eyes, in order 
to justify their own bestiality. Others try with all 
their might to raise woman to their own level; they 
oblige her to con the three thousand five hundred 
species and to speak and write the same folly that they 
speak and write themselves.” 

Likarieff’s face darkened. 

“But I tell you that woman always has been and 
always will be the slave of man,” he said in a deep 
voice, banging on the table with his fist. “She is a 
soft and tender wax out of which man has always been 
able to fashion whatever he had a mind to. Good 
God! For a man’s penny passion she will cut off her 
hair, desert her family, and die in exile. There is not 
one feminine principle among all those for which she 
has sacrificed herself. She is a defenceless, devoted 
slave. I have measured no skulls, but I say this from 
grievous, bitter experience. The proudest, the most 
independent of women, if I can but succeed in com- 
municating my passion to her, will follow me unreason- 
ingly, unquestioningly, doing all I desire. Out of a ~ 
nun I once made a nihilist who, I heard later, shot a 
policeman. In all my wanderings my wife never left 


ON THE WAY 223 


me for an instant, and, like a weathercock, changed her 
faith with each of my changing passions.” 

Likarieff leaped up and walked about the room. 

“It is a noble, an exalted bondage!” he cried, clasp- 
ing his hands. “In that bondage lies the loftiest sig- 
nificance of woman’s existence. Of all the terrible ab- 
surdities that filled my brain during my intercourse 
with women, my memory has retained, like a filter, 
not theories nor wise words nor philosophy, but that 
extraordinary submission, that wonderful compassion, 
that universal forgiveness ‘4 

Likarieff clinched his hands, fixed his eyes on one 
spot, and with a sort of passionate tension, as if he 
were sucking at each word, muttered between set teeth: 

“'This—this magnanimous toleration, this faithful- 
ness unto death, this poetry of heart— The meaning 
of life lies in this uncomplaining martyrdom, in this 
all-pardoning love that brings light and warmth into 
the chaos of life——” 

llovaiskaya rose slowly, took a step in the direction 
of Likarieff, and fixed her eyes on his face. By the 
tears which shone on his lashes, by his trembling, pas- 
sionate utterance, she saw clearly that women were not 
a mere casual topic of conversation; they were the ob- 
ject of a new passion or, as he called it himself, a new 
belief. For the first time in her life Ilovaiskaya saw 
before her a man inspired by passionate faith. Ges- 
ticulating, with shining eyes, he appeared to her in- 
sane, delirious, but in the fire of his glance, in his 


224 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


speech, in the movements of his whole great frame she 
felt such beauty that, without being conscious of it 
herself, she stood paralysed before him and looked into 
his face with rapture. 

“Take my mother!” he cried, holding out his arms 
to her with a face of supplication. “I have poisoned 
her existence; I have dishonoured her name; I have 
harmed her as much as her bitterest enemy could 
have done—and what is her answer? My brothers 
give her pennies for holy wafers and Te Deums, and 
she strangles her religious sentiments and sends them in 
secret to her worthless Gregory. Those little coins 
are far stronger to teach and ennoble the soul than all 
the theories and wise sayings and three thousand five 
hundred species. I could cite to you a thousand exam- 
ples. Take, for instance, yourself! Here you are, on 
your way to your father and brother at midnight, in 
a blizzard, because you want to cheer their holiday by 
your tenderness, and all the time, perhaps, they are 
not thinking of you and have forgotten your existence! 
Wait until you love a man! Then you will go to the 
north pole for him. You would, wouldn’t you?” 

“Yes, if—I loved him.” 

“There, you see!” rejoiced Likarieff, and he even 
stamped his foot. “Good Lord! How glad I am to 
have known you! It is my good fortune to keep meet- 
ing the most magnificent people. There is not a day 
that I do not meet some one for whom I would sell my 
soul. There are far more good people in this world 


ON THE WAY 225 


than bad ones. See how freely and open-heartedly you 
and I have been talking together, as if we had been 
friends for a century! Sometimes, I tell you, a man 
will have the courage to hold his tongue for ten years 
with his wife and friends;and then will suddenly meet 
a cadet in a railway carriage and blurt out his whole 
soul to him. This is the first time. I have had the 
pleasure of seeing you, and yet I have confessed to you 
things I have never confessed to any one before. Why 
is that?” 

Rubbing his hands and smiling happily, Likarieff 
walked about the room and once more began to talk 
of women. The church-bell rang for the vigil service. 

“Oh! Oh!” wept Sasha. “He talks so much he 
won’t let me sleep!” 

“Yes, that is true,”’ said Likarieff, recollecting him- 
self. “I’m sorry, my little one. Go to sleep; go to 
sleep——” 

“T have two little boys besides her,”’ he whispered. 
“They live with their uncle, but this one couldn’t sur- 
vive for a day without her father. She complains and 
grumbles, but she clings to me like a fly tohoney. But 
I have been chattering too much, my dear young lady, 
and have kept you from sleeping, Will you let me pre- 
pare a couch for you?” 

Without waiting for her permission, he shook out 
her wet cloak and laid it along the bench with the fur 
side up, picked up her scattered scarfs and shawls, 
folded her coat into a roll, and placed it at the head of 


226 - STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


the couch. He did all this in silence, with an expres- 
sion of humble reverence on his face, as if he were 
busied not with feminine rags but with the fragments 
of some holy vessel. 

His whole frame had a guilty and embarrassed look 
as if he were ashamed of being so large and strong in 
the presence of a weak being. 

When Ilovaiskaya had lain down he blew out the 

_candle and took a seat on a stool beside the stove. 
“And so, my little lady,” he whispered, puffing at a 
thick cigarette and blowing the smoke into the stove, 
“nature has given the Russian an extraordinary facil- 
ity for belief, an investigating mind, and the gift of 
speculation; but all this is scattered like chaff before 
his laziness, his indifference, and his dreamy frivolity— 
Yes——” 

Tlovaiskaya stared wonderingly into the shadows and 
saw only the red spot on the icon and the flickering 
firelight on the face of Likarieff. The darkness, the 
ringing of the church-bells, the roar of the storm, the 
lame boy, the grumbling Sasha, the unhappy Likarieff 
and his sayings—all these flowed together in the girl’s 
mind and grew into one gigantic impression. The 
world seemed fantastic to her, full of marvels and 
forces of magic. All that she had just heard rang in 
her ears, and the life of man seemed to her to be a 
lovely and poetical fairy-tale without an ending. 

The mighty impression grew and grew, engulfed her 
consciousness, and changed into a sweet dream. [Ilo- 


ON THE WAY _ 227 


vaiskaya slept, but she still saw the little shrine lamp 
and the large nose on which the ruddy firelight was 
playing. 

She heard weeping. 

“Dear papa!”’ a tender child’s voice besought. “Do 
let us go back to uncle! There they have a Christmas 
tree, and Stephen and Nicolas are there!” 

“My darling, what can I do?” entreated the deep, 
low voice of a man. “Understand me, do under- 
stand!” 

And a man’s weeping was joined to that of the child. 
This voice of human woe in the midst of the howl- 
ing storm seemed to the girl’s ears such sweet, human 
music that she could not endure the delight of it, and 
also wept. Then she heard a large, dark shadow 
quietly approach her, pick up her shawl, which had 
slipped to the floor, and wrap it about her feet. 

Tlovaiskaya was awakened by a strange sound of 
bawling. She jumped up and looked about her in 
‘astonishment. The blue light of dawn was already 
peeping in at the windows which were almost drifted 
over with snow. A grey half-light lay in the room, and 
in it the stove, the sleeping child, and Nasr-Ed-Din 
were distinctly visible. The stove and the shrine lamp 
had gone out. Through the wide-open door could be 
seen the large tap-room with its counter and tables. 
A man with a dull, gipsy face and wondering eyes was 
standing in the middle of the floor in a pool of melted 
snow and was holding a large red star on a stick. A 


298 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


throng of little boys surrounded him, motionless as 
statues, all plastered over with snow. The light of the 
star shone through the red paper and shed a crimson 
glow on their wet faces. The little crowd was bawling 
in a disorderly fashion, and all that Ilovaiskaya could 
distinguish was the single couplet: 


**Ho, youngster, you tiny one, 
Take a knife, a shiny one 
We'll kill, we'll kill the Jew, 
The weary son of rue——” 


Likarieff was standing near the counter gazing with 
emotion at the singers and beating time with his foot. 
At sight of Ilovaiskaya a smile spread over his whole 
face and he went up to her. She, too, smiled. 

“Merry Christmas!” he cried. “I saw that you 
were sleeping well.” 

Tlovaiskaya looked at him, said nothing, and con- 
tinued to smile. 

After their talk of last night he no longer appeared 
tall and broad-shouldered to her, but small, as the 
largest ship appears small when we are told that it has 
crossed the ocean. 

“Well, it is time for me to go,” she said. “I must 
put on my things. Tell me, where are you going 
now?” 

“To the station of Klinushka; from there I shall go 
to Sergyevo, and from Sergyevo I shall drive forty 
miles to some coal-mines belonging to an old fool of a 


ON THE WAY 229 


general named Shashkofski. My brothers have found 
me a place there as manager. I am going to mine 
coal.” 

“Why, I know those coal-mines! Shashkofski is my 
uncle. But—why are you going there?” asked Ilo- 
vaiskaya, staring at Likarieff in astonishment. 

“To be manager. I am going to manage the coal- 
mines.” 

“TI don’t understand,” said Ilovaiskaya, shrugging 
her shoulders. “You are going to the mines. But 
don’t you know that they lie in a barren, uninhabited 
waste? It’s so lonely there you won’t be able to stand 
it aday. The coal is horrible; no one will buy it; and 
my uncle is a maniac, a despot, a bankrupt—you won’t 
even get a salary!” 

“Never mind,” said Likarieff indifferently. “I’m 
thankful even for the mine.” 

llovaiskaya shrugged her shoulders and walked ex- 
citedly up and down. 

“IT don’t understand; I don’t understand!” she cried, 
waving her fingers in front of her face. “It’s impos- 
sible and—and senseless! Oh, understand that it’s— 
it’s worse than exile; it’s aliving tomb! Oh, Heavens!” 
she cried hotly, going up to Likarieff and waving her 
fingers before his smiling face. Her upper lip trembled 
and her piquant face paled. “Oh, imagine that barren 
plain, that solitude! There is not a soul there with 
whom to speak a word, and you—have an enthusiasm 
for women! A coal-mine and women!” 


230 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


Tlovaiskaya suddenly grew ashamed of her ardour 
and, turning away from Likarieff, walked across to the 
window. 

“No, no, you mustn’t go there!”’ she cried, rapidly 
fingering the panes. 

She felt not only in her soul but even in her back 
that behind her stood a man who was immeasurably 
unhappy and neglected and lost, but he stood looking 
at her, smiling kindly, as if he did not realise his un- 
happiness, as if he had not wept the night before. It 
would be better were he still crying! She walked back 
and forth across the room several times in agitation and 
then stopped thoughtfully in a corner. Likarieff was 
saying something but she did not hear him. She 
turned her back to him and drew a little bill from her 
purse. This she crushed in her hands for a long time; 
then she glanced round at Likarieff, blushed, and thrust 
it into her pocket. 

The voice of the coachman was now heard outside 
the door. [lovaiskaya began to put on her things with 
a stern, concentrated expression on her face. Likarieff 
chatted merrily as he wrapped her up, but each word 
of his fell like a weight on her heart. It is not gay to 
hear an unhappy or dying man jest. 

When the transformation of a living being into a 
bundle had been effected, Ilovaiskaya gave one last 
look at the “‘visitors’ room,”’ stood silent for a mo- 
ment, and went slowly out. Likarieff followed her to 
see her off. 


ON THE WAY 231 


Out-of-doors, Heaven knows for whi, -eshesastis the 
winter wind was still raging. / 

Whole clouds of soft, heavy snow were whirling rest- 
lessly along the ground, unable to find peace. Horses, 
sleighs, trees, and a bull tied to a post—all were white 
and looked fluffy and soft. 

“Well, God bless you—” muttered Likarieff, seat- 
ing Ilovaiskaya in her sleigh. “Don’t think ill of 


>> 


ne 


Tlovaiskaya was silent. As the sleigh moved away - 


and made the tour of a huge snow-drift she looked round 
at Likarieff as if wishing to say something. He ran 
toward her, but she said not a word and only glanced at 
him between her long lashes, on which hung the snow- 
flakes. 

Either his sensitive soul had really been able to read 
the meaning of this glance or else his fancy deceived 
him, but it suddenly seemed to him that, had he but 
added two or three more good, strong strokes to the 
picture, this girl would have forgiven him his failure, 
his age, and his misfortune, and would have followed 
him unquestioningly and unreasoningly. He stood 
there for a long time as if in a trance, staring at the 
track left by the runners of her sleigh. The snowflakes 
settled eagerly on his hair, on his beard, on his shoulders 
—the track of the sleigh soon vanished and he himself 
was covered with snow; he began to resemble a white 
crag, but his eyes still continued to search for something 
among the white snow-clouds. 


THE HEAD GARDENER’S 
TALE 


SALE of flowers was taking place in the green- | 

houses of Count N . There were few pur- 
chasers present; only a young timber merchant, a 
neighbouring landowner of mine, and myself. Whilst 
the workmen were bearing out our magnificent pur- 
chases and packing them into wagons, we sat in the 
doorway of one of the greenhouses and chatted of this 
and that. It is extremely pleasant to sit in a garden 
on an April morning listening to the birds and looking 
at the flowers which have been carried out into the open 
air and are basking in the sunshine. 

The gardener himself was overseeing the packing of 
our plants. It was Mikail Karlovitch, a time-honoured 
old man with a clean-shaven face, wearing a fur waist- 
coat and no coat. He was not saying a word but was 
keeping one ear open to our conversation, thinking 
that we might tell some bit of news. He was an intelli- 
gent, very kind-hearted man. For some reason people 
thought him a German, although his father had been a 
Swede and his mother a Russian and he went to the 
Russian church. He knew Russian and German and 
Swedish and read a great deal in each of : these lan- 


guages, and one could give him no greater pleasure than 
232 


THE HEAD GARDENER’S TALE 238 


to let him have a new book to read or to talk with him 
about Ibsen, for instance. 

He had his failings, but they were all harmless ones. 
For example, he always spoke of himself as the “head 
gardener,” though no under gardeners existed; the 
expression of his face was singularly haughty and 
grave; he could not endure contradiction and liked to 
be listened to seriously and attentively. 

“That young lad over there is a fearful rascal,” 
said my neighbour, pointing to a dark, gipsy-faced 
workman driving by on a water barrel. “He was tried 
for robbery in town last week and let off. He was pro- 
nounced mentally unsound, and yet look at him; he 
seems healthy enough! A great many scoundrels have 
been acquitted in Russia lately on the plea of a dis- 
eased condition, and the effects of these acquittals and 
of this obvious weakness and indulgence cannot but be 
bad. They have demoralised the masses; the sense 
of justice has been dulled in every one, for we have 
now become accustomed to seeing crime go unpunished, 
and we can say boldly of our times, in the words of 


Shakespeare: 


***For in the fatness of these pursy times 
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg.’” 


“That is true,” the merchant assented. “Since all 
these pardons have been granted we have had far 
more crimes of murder and arson than formerly. Ask 
the peasants if that isn’t so.” 


234 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


The gardener Mikail Karlovitch turned to us and 
said: 

“As for me, sirs, I always welcome a verdict of 
acquittal with delight. I do not tremble for morality 
and justice when a man is declared to be innocent; on 
the contrary, I experience a feeling of pleasure. I re- 
joice to hear it, even when my conscience tells me that 
the jury have made a mistake in acquitting the prisoner. 
Don’t you think yourselves, sirs, that if judges and 
juries had more faith in human nature than in speeches 
and material proofs this faith might, in itself, be more 
important than any worldly considerations? It is only 
attainable by the few who know and feel Christ.” 

“The idea is a good one,” said I. 

“The idea is not a new one. I even remember to 
have heard a legend long ago on that very theme, a 
very pretty legend,” the gardener said, smiling. “It 
was told me by my grandmother, my father’s mother, 
a shrewd old woman. She told it in Swedish; it would 
not sound so beautiful, so classical, in Russian.” 

But we begged him to tell it and never mind the 
harshness of the Russian tongue. Delighted, he slowly 
finished smoking his pipe, glared angrily at the work- 
men, and began: 

“A homely, middle-aged man once came to live in 
a little town. His name was Thomson or Wilson, it 
matters not which; that has nothing to do with the 
story. He practised a noble profession; he was a healer 
of the sick. He was gruff and uncommunicative always 


THE HEAD GARDENER’S TALE — 235 


and only spoke when his profession demanded it; he 
never visited anywhere and never extended his ac- 
quaintance with any one beyond a silent nod and lived 
as frugally as an ascetic. The thing is, he was a learned 
man, and in those days learned men were not as com- 
mon folk. They passed their days and nights in medi- 
tation, in reading books, and in healing the sick; every- 
thing else they looked upon as trivial and they had no 
time to waste in words. The citizens of the town knew 
this very well and tried not to bother him with visits and 
idle gossip. They were overjoyed that at last God had 
sent them a man who could cure their sick and were 
proud to have any one so wonderful living in their town. 

“ *He knows everything!’ it was said of him. 

“But that was not enough; they should also have 
said: “He loves every one!’ A marvellous, angelic 
heart beat in the breast of this learned man. After all, 
the inhabitants of the town were but strangers to him; 
they were not his kindred, and yet he loved them as 
though they had been his children and did not even 
begrudge them his life. He was ill himself of consump- 
tion, and yet when he was summoned to a sick-bed he 
would forget his own illness and, without sparing him- 
self, would climb panting up the mountains, no matter 
how high they might be. He braved heat and cold and 
scorned hunger and thirst. He never accepted money, 
and the strange thing was that when a patient died he 
would follow the body weeping to the grave with the 
kith and kin. 


236 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“He soon became so indispensable that the citizens 
marvelled that they had been able to exist without him. 
Their gratitude knew no bounds. Old and young, good 
and bad, honest men and rogues—in a word, all— 
honoured him and recognised his worth. There was not 
a creature in the town and its vicinity who would have 
permitted himself to do him an injury or even to en- 
tertain the thought of it. When he went away from 
home he used to leave doors and windows unbolted, 
in perfect certainty that no thief existed who could 
make up his mind to do him a wrong. It often hap- 
pened that his duty as doctor called him out onto the 
highroads among forests and mountains, where prowled 
many hungry vagrants, but he felt himself perfectly 
safe. One night when he was on his way home from 
the bedside of a sick man, he was attacked by high- 
waymen in a forest, but when they recognised him 
these men respectfully took off their caps to him and 
asked him if he wouldn’t have something to eat. When 
he told them he was not hungry, they lent him a warm 
cloak and escorted him to the very town, glad that fate 
had given them an opportunity of repaying in some 
way the goodness of this great-hearted man. 

“Well, my grandmother would go on to say, even 
the horses and dogs and cows knew him and showed 
pleasure on seeing him. 

“And this man, who seemed to be safeguarded by 
his saintliness from every evil and who even counted 
highwaymen and madmen among his friends, one 


THE HEAD GARDENER’S TALE — 237 


fine morning was found murdered. He lay, all blood- 
stained, at the bottom of a ravine, and his skull was 
broken in. His white face expressed surprise. Yes, 
surprise and not horror had been imprinted on his 
features when he had seen his murderer before him. 

“You can imagine the sorrow that now overwhelmed 
the town and all the countryside. In despair, scarcely 
crediting his eyesight, each man asked himself: ‘Who 
could have killed this man?’ The judges who held the 
inquest on the body of the doctor said: ‘We have here 
every evidence of murder, but, as there is no man in 
the world who could have killed our doctor, it is clear 
that murder could not have been committed and that 
this combination of evidence is simply a coincidence. 
We must suppose that the doctor fell over the edge of 
the cliff in the dark and was mortally injured.’ 

“The whole town assented in this opinion. They 
buried the doctor, and no one any more talked of a 
death by violence. The existence of a man degraded 
enough to murder the doctor seemed unthinkable. 
There is a limit even to baseness, isn’t there? 

“But—will you believe it, suddenly, by accident, 
the murderer was discovered! Some scamp who had 
already been arrested many times and who was well 
known for his vicious life offered the doctor’s snuff-box 
and watch in exchange for a drink at a tavern. When 
he was accused of the crime he looked taken aback and 
told some transparent lie. A search was instituted, and 
a shirt with bloody sleeves and a doctor’s gold-mounted 


238 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


lancet were found in his bed. What other proofs were 
needed? The wretch was thrown into prison. The 
citizens were indignant, but at the same time they said: 
‘It is unbelievable! It cannot be! Take care that you 
make no mistake; evidence has been known to lie!’ 

“At his trial the murderer obstinately denied his 
guilt. Everything spoke against him, and it was as 
easy to believe him guilty as it is to believe that earth 
is black; but his judges seemed to have gone mad. 
They weighed each bit of evidence a dozen times, kept 
looking mistrustfully at the witnesses, flushing, and 
drinking water. The trial began early one morning and 
lasted until late that night. 

*“*You have been convicted!’ the chief justice said, 
turning toward the murderer. ‘The court has found 
you guilty of the murder of Doctor So-and-So and has, 
therefore, condemned you to——’ 

“The judge wanted to say ‘death,’ but the paper on 
which the sentence was written fell from his hands; he 
wiped the cold sweat from his brow and cried: 

*“*No! May God punish me if I am giving an unjust 
verdict! I swear he isinnocent. I cannot tolerate the 
idea that a man should exist who would dare to murder 
our friend the doctor. Man is not capable of falling 
so low.’ 

*“*No, there is no man capable of it,’ the other 
judges agreed. 

“*No one!’ echoed the crowd. ‘Release him!’ 

“The murderer was released, and not one single 


THE HEAD GARDENER’S TALE 239 


soul accused the court of giving an unjust verdict. 
And, my grandmother used to say, for their faith God 
forgave the sins of all the inhabitants of that town. 
He rejoices when people believe that mankind is made 
in his likeness and image, and he is sad when they for- 
get man’s worth and judge him more harshly than they 
would a dog. Even if that acquittal did harm to the 
inhabitants of the town, think, on the other hand, what 
a beneficent influence their faith in mankind had on 
those people—a faith which does not remain inactive 
but breeds generous thoughts in our hearts and stimu- 
lates us to respect every man. Every man!” 

Mikail Karlovitch ended. My neighbour wanted to 
retort something, but the gardener made a gesture, 
showing that he did not like to be answered and walked 
away to the wagons, where he once more applied him- 
self to packing our plants with an expression of im- 
portance on his face. 


HUSH! 


[ VAN KRASNU KIN, \a mediocre newspaper re- 
I porter, always comes home late at night sombre, 
solemn, and somehow tremendously concentrated. He 
looks as if he were expecting to be searched or were 
contemplating suicide. As he paces up and down his 
room he stops, ruffles his hair, and says in the tone of 
Laertes about to avenge his sister: | 

“I am distracted; I am weary to the bottom of my 
soul; sorrow lies heavy on my heart; and yet I am 
expected to sit down and write! And this is called 
‘living’! Why has no writer ever described the tor- 
menting discords which harrow an author’s soul when, 
being sad, he must provoke the crowd to mirth and, 
being merry, he must shed tears as he is bidden. Yes, 
I should have to be gay and unconcerned and witty 
even though I were bowed down with grief, even 
though I were, let us say, ill, though my child were 
dying, though my wife were in great pain!” 

As he says this he shakes his fist and rolls his eyes. 

Then he goes into the bedroom and wakes his wife. 

(“Nadia!’? he says, “I am going to begin writing. 

Please see that no one disturbs me. I can’t write if 


the kids are bawling or the cook is snoring. And see, 
240 


HUSH ! 241 


too, that I get some tea and—and a beefsteak, possibly. 
You know I can’t write unless I get my tea. It is tea 
alone that gives me strength for my work.” 

Returning to his own room, he takes off his coat, his 
waistcoat, and his boots. He undresses with delibera- 
tion, and then, composing his features in an expression 
of injured innocence, he takes his seat at his desk. 

On that desk is no casual object of every-day life. 
Everything, every tiniest trifle, seems to be charged with 
' meaning and to be carrying out some stern programme. 
Here are little busts and pictures of famous authors; 
here are a pile of manuscript, a volume of Belinski’s 
works with one page turned down, an occipital bone 
serving as an inkstand, a page from some newspaper 
carelessly folded but exhibiting a column marked with 
blue pencil in a large hand, “Cowardly!” Here, too, 
lie a dozen newly sharpened pencils and penholders 
with fresh pens, so that no external cause or accident 
shall interfere for a moment with the free flight of 
creative fancy. 

Krasnukin throws himself back in his easy chair and 
plunges into the consideration of a subject. He hears 
his wife shuffling about in slippers as she splits kindling 
for the samovar. She is still half asleep, as he can tell, 
because every now and then the cover or a leg of the 
samovar drops out of her hands. The hissing of the 
samovar and of the frying meat soon reaches his ears. 
His wife still goes on splitting wood and banging about 
near the stove, slamming now the oven door, now the 


— 


242 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


damper, and now the door of the fire-box. Suddenly 
Krasnukin shudders, opens his eyes wide with terror, 
and begins to sniff the air. 

“Good Lord! Charcoal fumes!” he gasps, his face 
contorted with agony. “Charcoal fumes! That in- 
sufferable woman has made up her mind to suffocate 
me! Tell me, for Heaven’s sake, how can I possibly 
write under conditions like these?” 

He flings into the kitchen and breaks into tragic 
lamentations. When shortly his wife, walking on tip- 
toe, brings him a cup of tea he is already sitting in his 
armchair as he was before, motionless, immersed in his 
subject. He does not move, drums lightly on his fore- 
head with his fingers, and pretends not to notice his 
wife’s presence. His face again takes on an expression 
of injured innocence. 

Like a girl to whom some one has given a pretty fan, 
before writing the title he flirts with it for a long time, 
posing and coquetting for his own benefit. Now he 
presses his hands to his temples, now he shrinks to- 
gether and draws up his feet under his chair as if he 
were in pain, now he languidly half closes his eyes, like 
a cat on a sofa. At last, hesitatingly, he reaches to- 
ward the inkstand, and with the air of signing a death- 
warrant he writes down the titl—— 

“Mamma, I want some water!” he hears his son’s 
voice cry. 

“Hush!” says the mother. “Papa is writing. 
Hush!” 


HUSH ! 243 


Papa is writing quickly, quickly, never stopping, 
never cancelling a word, hardly finding time to turn the 
pages. The busts and portraits of the famous authors 
watch his swiftly flying pen and seem to think: “Aha, 
brother! Go for it!” 

“Hush!” scratches the pen. 

“Hush!” rattle the authors, shaken on the table by a 
push from the writer’s knee. 

Krasnukin suddenly draws himself up, lays down 
his pen, and listens. He hears an even, monotonous 
whispering. It is} Foma Nikolaitch,} the boarder, say- 
ing his prayers in the next room. 

“Look here!” calls out Krasnukin. “Can’t you 
pray more quietly? You keep me from writing.” 

“T beg your pardon,” answers Foma Nikolaitch 
timidly. 

“<< Hush!” 

Having written five pages, Krasnukin stretches him- 
self and looks at the clock. 

“Heavens! Three o'clock already,” he groans. 
“Every one is asleep; only I, I alone must work!” 

Broken down, exhausted, his head hanging to one 
side, he goes into the bedroom and wakes his wife. 

“Nadia, give me some more tea!”’ he says in a weary 
voice. “I’m—I’m feeling weak.” 

He writes until four and would like to go on until 
six, but he has exhausted his subject. His coquetting 
and showing off before inanimate objects, where he is 
far from prying, indiscreet eyes, his despotism and 


244 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


tyranny in the little ant’s nest over which fate has given 
him authority, these are for him the spice of life. How 
little this despot at home resembles the puny, humble, 
speechless, incapable beings we are in the habit of see- 
ing in the offices of newspapers! 

“T am so tired that I don’t think I shall be able to 
sleep,” he says as he goes to bed. “Our work, this in- 
fernal, thankless drudgery of a galley-slave, does not 
tire. the body so much as the mind. I must take some 
drops of bromide. Ah, Heaven knows, if it weren’t 
for my family I’d throw over the whole thing! Oh, 
*tis awful to have to write to order like this.” 

He falls into a profound and wholesome slumber 
and sleeps until one or two o’clock in the afternoon. 
Ah, how much longer he would have slept, what dreams 
he would have dreamed, had he been a famous author, 
or an editor, or even a publisher! 

“He was writing all night,” whispers his wife with 
a frightened face. ‘“‘Hush!” 

' No one dares speak or walk or make a sound. His 
sleep is sacred, and whoever is guilty of disturbing it 
will have to pay dearly. 

“Hush!” is wafted through all the rooms. “‘Hush!” 


WITHOUT A TITLE 


N the fifteenth century, as now, the sun rose every 
morning and sank to rest every night. When its 
first rays kissed the dew the earth awoke and the air 
was filled with sounds of joy, ecstasy, and hope; at 
eventide the same earth grew still and sank into dark- 
ness. Sometimes a thunder-cloud would roll up and 
the thunder roar angrily, or a sleepy star drop from 
heaven, or a pale monk come running in to tell the 
brothers that he had seen a tiger not far from the mon- 
astery—and that was all.. Then once again day would 
resemble day, and night. night. 

The monks worked and prayed, and their old prior 
played the organ, composed Latin verses, and wrote 
out music. This fine old man had a remarkable talent; 
he played the organ with such skill that even the most 
ancient of the monks, whose hearing had grown feeble 
as the end of their lives drew near, could not restrain 
their tears when the notes of his organ came floating 
from his cell. When he spoke, even if it were only of 
the commonest things, such as trees, wild beasts, or the 
sea, no one could listen to him without either a smile 
or a tear; the same notes seemed to vibrate in his soul 


that vibrated in the organ. When he was moved by 
245 


246 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


wrath or great joy, when he spoke of things that were 
terrible and grand, a passionate inspiration would 
master him, tears would start from his flashing eyes, 
his face would flush, his voice peal like thunder, and 
the listening monks would feel their souls wrung by his 
exaltation. During these splendid, these marvellous 
moments his power was unlimited; if he had ordered 
his elders to throw themselves into the sea they would 
all have rushed rapturously, with one accord, to fulfil 
his desire. 

His music, his voice, and the verses with which he 
praised God were a source of never-ending joy to the 
monks. Sometimes in their monotonous lives the 
trees, the flowers, the spring and autumn grew tire- 
some, the noise of the sea wearied them, and the songs 
of the birds grew unpleasing, but the talents of their 
old prior, like bread, they needed every day. 

A score of years passed. Day resembled day, and 
night night. Not a living creature showed itself near 
the monastery except wild beasts and birds. The near- 
est human habitation was far away, and to reach it 
from the monastery or to reach the monastery from 
there one had to cross a desert one hundred miles wide. 
This only those dared to do who set no value on life, 
who had renounced it, and journeyed to the monastery 
as to a tomb. 

What, then, was the surprise of the monks when one 
night a man knocked at their gates who proved to be 
an inhabitant of the city, the most ordinary of sinners, 


WITHOUT A TITLE 247 


with a love of life! Before saying a prayer or asking 
the blessing of the prior this man demanded food and 
wine. When they asked him how he had got into the 
desert from the city he answered them by telling a long 
hunter’s tale; he had gone hunting, and had had too 
much to drink, and had lost his way. To the sugges- 
tion that he should become a monk and save his soul 
he replied with a smile and the words: “I am no friend 
of yours.” 

Having eaten and drunk his fill, he looked long at the 
monks who were serving him, reproachfully shook his 
head, and said: 

“You don’t do anything, you monks. All you care 
about is your victuals and drink. Is that the way to . 
save your souls? Think now: while you are living 
quietly here, eating, drinking, and dreaming of bless- 
edness, your fellow men are being lost and damned to 
hell. Look what goes on in the city! Some die of 
starvation, while others, not knowing what to do with 
their gold, plunge into debauchery and perish like flies 
in honey. There is no faith nor truth among men. 
Whose duty is it to save them? Is it mine, who am 
drunk from morning till night? Did God give you faith 
and loving and humble hearts that you should sit here 
between your four walls and do nothing?” 

The drunken speech of the townsman was insolent 
and unseemly, yet it strangely affected the prior. The 
old man and his monks looked at each other; then he 
paled and said: 


248 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“Brothers, he is right! It is true that, owing to 
folly and weakness, unfortunate mankind is perishing 
in unbelief and sin, and we do not move from the spot, 
as if it were no business of ours. Why should I not go 
and remind them of the Christ whom they have for- 
gotten?” 

The old man was transported by the words of the 
townsman. On the following day he grasped his staff, 
bade farewell to the brothers, and set out for the city. 
So the monks were left without music, without his 
words and his verses. 

They waited first one month and then two, and still 
the old man did not return. At last, at the end of the 
third month, they heard the familiar tapping of his 
staff. The monks flew out to meet him and showered 
him with questions; but, instead of rejoicing with them, 
he wept bitterly and did not utter a word. The monks 
saw that he was thin and had aged greatly and that 
weariness and profound sorrow were depicted on his 
face. When he wept he had the look of a man who 
had been deeply hurt. 

Then the monks, too, burst into tears and asked why 
he was weeping and why his face looked so stern, but 
he answered not.a word and went and locked himself 
in his cell. For five days he stayed there and neither 
ate nor drank, neither did he play the organ. When the 
monks knocked at his door and entreated him to come 
out and share his sorrow with them his answer was a 
profound silence. 


= 


‘ 


WITHOUT A TITLE 249 


At last he emerged. Collecting all the monks about 
him, with a face swollen with weeping and with many 
expressions of indignation and distress, he began to 
tell them all that had happened to him during the past 
three months. His voice was calm and his eyes smiled 
as he described his journey from the monastery to the 
city. Birds had sung and brooks babbled to him by 


_ the wayside, he said, and sweet, new-born hopes had 


agitated his breast. He felt that he was a soldier ad- 
vancing to battle and certain victory, he walked along 
dreaming, composing hymns and verses as he went, 
and was surprised when he found that he had reached 
his journey’s end. 

But his voice trembied, his eyes flashed, and anger 
burned hot within him when he began to tell of the 
city and of mankind. Never before had he seen or 
dared to imagine what he encountered when he entered 
the town. Here, in his old age, he saw and understood 
for the first time in his life the might of Satan, the 
splendour of iniquity, and the weakness and despicable 

3 faint-heartedness of mankind. By an evil chance, the 
first house he entered was an abode of sin. Here half a 
hundred men with a great deal of money were feasting 
and drinking wine without end. Overpowered by its 
fumes, they were singing songs and boldly saying things 
so shocking and terrible that no God-fearing man 
would dare to mention them. They were unboundedly 
free and happy and bold; they feared neither God nor 
the devil nor death, did and said whatever they had 


250 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


a mind to, and went wherever they were driven by 
their desires. The wine, clear as amber, was surely 
intolerably fragrant and delicious, for every one who 
quaffed it smiled rapturously and straightway desired 
to drink again. It returned smile for smile and spar- 
kled joyfully, as if it knew what fiendish seduction lay 
hidden in its sweetness. 

More than ever weeping and burning with anger, the 
old man went on describing what he had seen. On 
the table in the midst of the feasters, he said, stood 
a half-naked woman. It would be hard’to imagine 
anything more glorious and enchanting than she was. 
Young, long-haired, with dark eyes and thick lips, in- 
solent and shameless, this vermin smiled, showing her 
teeth as white as snow, as if saying: “Behold how 
beautiful, how insolent I am!” Splendid draperies of 
silk and brocade fell from her shoulders, but her beauty 
would not be hidden beneath a garment and eagerly 
made its way through the folds, as young verdure forces 
itself through the earth in the springtime. The shame) 
less woman drank wine, sang songs, and surrendered # 
herself to the feasters. E 

Wrathfully brandishing his arms, the old man went — 


on to describe hippodromes, bull-fights, theatres, and ~ 


the workshops of artists, where the forms of naked 
women were painted and modelled in clay. He spoke 
eloquently, sonorously, with inspiration, as if he were © 
playing on some invisible instrument, and the stupefied 
monks eagerly hung on his words and panted with > 


WITHOUT A TITLE 251 


ecstasy. Having described all the charms of the devil, 
the beauty of wickedness, and the enchanting grace of 
the infamous female form, the old man cursed Satan,_ 
turned on his heel, and vanished behind his door. 

When he came out of his cell next morning not a 
monk remained in the monastery. They were all on 
their way to the city. 


IN THE RAVINE 


I 


HE village of Ukleyeyo lay in a ravine, so that 
only the church steeple and the chimneys of its 
cotton-printing mills could be seen from the highroad 
and from the railway station. If a traveller inquired 
what village that was, he was told: 
“That is the village where the deacon ate all the 
caviare at the funeral.” — “ 
That is to say that, at a wake at the manufacturer 
Kostiukoff’s, a grey-beard deacon had caught sight of 
some fresh caviare among the other delicacies on the 
table and had fallen greedily upon it. They had nudged 
him and pulled his sleeve, but he seemed to have 
fallen into a trance of delight, for he felt nothing and 
only went on eating. He ate all the caviar e, and there 
had been four pounds of it in the jart I 
ward, though the deacon had been dea . 
that episode of the caviare was still remembered. Was 
ST, 
life so meagre in the village or were its people unable 
to notice anything beyond an unimportant event wk ic ‘ 
had happened ten years. ago? \Who can say? At: any 


rate, no other fact was ever rélated about Ukleyevo. 
252 


IN THE RAVINE 253 


Fever was always rampant in the village and the 
mud was always deep,‘even in summer, especially near 
the fences, which were overhung by ancient willow- 
trees that cast broad shadows across the roads. The 
air always smelled of refuse from the factories and of the 
vinegar which was used in dyeing the calico. The fac- 
tories—there were four of them, three cotton-mills and 
one tannery—lay not in the village itself but at some 
distance away, on its outskirts. They were small fac- 
tories; not more than four hundred men worked in all 
four. The water in the river often stank of the tan- 
nery; its refuse infected the meadows, and then the 
stock of the peasants would suffer from the plague. 
When this was the case the tannery was ordered to be 
closed: It was officially closed, but went on working 
in secret, with the connivance of the commissary of the 
rural police and of the district doctor, to each of whom 
the owner paid ten roubles a month. There were only 
two fair-sized brick houses with tin roofs in the whole 
village. One was occupied by the district administra- 
tion, and in the other, which was of two stories and 


stood directly!op sete site the church, lived the merchant, 
Gregory Tsibi > 


all grocery store, but this was only 


a 
rmeeroaralenaert 


| Mad the sake of appearances; as _a matter, of fact, t, he 


aes eed <HsS 


= came handy. “For instance, when magpies were 
wanted abroad to ‘trim ladies’ hats he made a profit 
of thirty copecks a pair on the birds. He bought 


254 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


standing timber, lent money at interest; on the whole, 
he was a. shrewd old man. 

He had two sons. The elder, _Anasim, was a de- 
tective and was seldom at home. The younger son, 
Stephen, had gone into trade and now worked for his 
father, but no real assistance was expected from him, as 
his health was bad and he was deaf. . Stephen’s wife, 
Aksinia, was a handsome, shapely woman who went 
to church on holidays }wearing a hat and carrying a 
parasol; she rose early and went to bed late, and was 
on the run all day long, with her skirts tucked up and 
her keys jangling, from the warehouse to the cellar 
and from the cellar to the store. Old Tsibukin would 
watch her gaily, with kindling eyes, and ‘at such times 
he used to wish that his elder son had been married 
to her instead of his younger one, who was deaf and 
was obviously no judge of feminine beauty. 

The old man had always had a great fondness for 
domestic life and oe bie” his family more than any- 
thing else in the worldy-especially his elder son, the de- 
tective, and his daughter-in-law. | Aksinia had no 
sooner married the deaf boy than she’ gave evidence of 
uncommon executive power. She knew. at once to 
whom she could give credit and to whom she could not; > 
she)kept all the keys herself, not even intrusting*them ~ 
“to her husband; she rattled away at the counting 
board; she looked in the horses’ mouths like a peasant; 
and was always laughing and shouting. ) The old man 
was touched by whatever she did and said and would 


IN THE RAVINE 255 


mutter when he saw her: “Go it, little bride! Go it, 
pretty daughter!” 

He was a widower, but, after his son had been mar- 
ried a year, he could endure it no longer and was 
married himself...A bride was found for him ‘thirty 
miles from the village, Varvara by name,\who, though 
no longer young, was pretty and striking. 


No sooner had she moved into her little room at the \y 


top of. ouse_than the whole. building seemed to 
be lighter, as if new panes had been let into the win- 
‘dows. -Shrine lamps were lighted, tables were covered. 
with table-cloths white as snow, little red flowers ap- 
peared in the windows, and at dinner they no longer 
all ate out of one dish; each person had a plate of his 
own. Varvara’s smile was gentle and pleasant and 
everything in the house seemed to smile with her. 
Beggars, wanderers, and pilgrims began to appear in 
the courtyard,.a thing which had never happened be- 
fore; the plaintive, singsong voices of the village peas- 
ant women were heard under the windows, mingled 
with the feeble coughing of weak, lean peasants who 
had been discharged from the factories for intemper- 
ance. | Varvara helped them with money and_bread 
and old clothes” ‘and later, when she grew to feel 
more at home in the house, began to give them things 
out of the store. The deaf boy once saw her car- 
rying away two little packets of tea and this confused 
him. 

“Mamma has just taken two packets of tea,” he an- 


256 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


nounced to his father later. ‘To whom shall I charge 
them?” 

The old man said not a word, but stood and medi- 
tated, working his eyebrows, and then went up-stairs to 
his wife. 

«Varvara, child,” he said tenderly, “if you need any- 
thing in the store, help yourself. | .) Take all you want 
and don’t hesitate.” 

Next day the deaf boy called up to her as he ran 
across the courtyard: 

“Tf you need anything, mamma, help yourself!” 

There was something new in this almsgiving of hers, 
something cheerful and free, hs there was in the shrine 
lamps and the red flowers. They felt this influence when 
they sold out their salt meat to the peasants on the 
eve of a fast, meat smelling so strong that one couldn’t 
stand near the barrel. | They felt it when /they took 
scythes and caps and women’s dresses in pawn from 
drunken men; and when \the factory workmen,rolled in 
the mud, stupefied by bad-védka; and when ‘evil s , 
to have condensed and ‘to Fair 3 in the air ‘like 
a fog, they felt somehow more at ease_at-the. thought 
that there, in the house, was a neat, gentle woman who 
had no do wit t meat ‘and yodka.” “During 
these Gini gloomy }days her charity was for 
them a safety-valve is for an engine. 

The days in Tsibukin’s house were spent in toil. Be- 
fore the sun was up Aksinia was snorting as she washed 
her face in an outhouse; the samovar was boiling in the 


IN THE RAVINE O57 


kitchen and droning as if foretelling disaster. Old 
Gregory, dressed in a long black coat, calico trousers, 
and shiny high boots, clean and small, was bustling 
about the rooms tapping on the floor with his heels like 
the old father-in-law in the song. At daybreak a rac- 
ing cart was brought to the door and the old man 
jumped bravely in and pulled his great cap down over 
his ears, and no one seeing him then would believe that 
he was already fifty-six. His wife and daughter-in- 
law came to see hirn off, and when he had on his long, 
clean coat and was driving his huge black stallion that 
had cost three nusdred roubles the old man did not 
like to be approachéd=by peasants with petitions and 

‘@oitiplaints. He hated and despised peasants and if , 
‘one of them was ‘waitifig for him at the gate would’ 

shout angrily: a 

“What are you standing there for? Move on!” 

Or, if it was a beggar, he would cry: 

*“No; God will help you!” ) 

So he drove away every morning on business, and 
his wife, in a dark dress with a black kerchief over her 
hair, put the rooms in order and helped in the kitchen. 
“Aksinia_kept the s store, and her laughter and shout- 
_ing and the clashing “of bottles and jingling of money 
_ could be heard in the courtyard/ as well as the angry 
cries of the customers she had cheated.) At the same 
time it was evident that a stealthy-trade in vodka was 
being carried on in the store. The deaf boy sat in 
the store or else walked about the streets without a 


258 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


hat, his hands in his pockets, gazing now at the huts, 
now up at the sky. Tea was drunk six times a day 
in the house, and they sat down to four meals. In 
the evening they counted up the day’s profits and 
then went soundly to sleep. 

The three factories in Ukleyevo, that of the Elder 
Hrimins, that of Hrimin’s Sons, and that of Kostiukoff, 
were connected by telephone with the houses of their 
owners. A telephone had also been installed in the 
office of the administration, but here it soon fell out 
of repair, for bedbugs and cockroaches began to breed 
init. The head of the district was illiterate and wrote 
entirely in capital letters, but he said after the telephone 
had been destroyed: 

“Yes, it will be a little hard for us now to manage 
without a telephone.” 

The Elder Hrimins and Hrimin’s Sons were in con- 
stant litigation, and sometimes the sons quarrelled 
among themselves and went to law, and then their fac- 
tory would close down for a month or two, until they 
had made their peace again. This amused the inhab- 
itants of Ukleyevo, as there was always much gossip 
and talk about the ground for each quarrel. On holi- 
days Kostiukoff and Hrimin’s Sons would go driving 
and fly galloping about Ukleyevo, running down the 
calves. Aksinia, decked out in her best and rustling 
her starched skirts, would stroll up and down the street 
near her store, and Hrimin’s Sons would catch her up 
and bear her away as if by force. Old Tsibukin, too, 


IN THE RAVINE 259 


would go driving then, to show off his new horse, and 
would take Varvara with him. 

In the evening, after the drive, when the others had 
gone to bed, the notes of an expensive accordion could 
be heard coming from the courtyard of Hrimin’s Sons; 
and then, if the moon was shining, a flutter of happi- 
ness would stir the heart at the sound and Ukleyevo 
would no longer seem such a hole. 


It 


The elder son, Anasim, seldom came home, but he 


often sent back gifts and letters by his fellow villagers. 


These letters were indited in a very beautiful, unknown — 


hand and were always written on a sheet of writing- 
paper, like a petition. They were full of expressions 
which Anasim never used in speaking, such as: “Kind 
Mother and Father: I am sending you a pound of the 
flowers of tea for the satisfaction of your physical re- 
quirements.” At the end of each letter was scratched 
as if with a very bad pen, “Anasim Tsibukin,” and be- 
low this again, in the superb handwriting, “Agent.” 
These letters were always read aloud several times, 
and the old man would say, agitated and flushed with 


excitement: 


“He wouldn’t live at home; he wanted an education. | 


Let him have it! Every Jack to his trade!” 
One day just before Shrove Tuesday a heavy rain 
was falling. The old man and Varvara had gone to 


260 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


the window to watch it, when, behold! there came 
Anasim driving up in a sleigh from the station. He 
had arrived quite unexpectedly, and as he entered the 
room he looked anxious and alarmed, and so he re- 
mained for the rest of his visit, with always something 
reckless in his behaviour. He was in no hurry to take 
his departure and acted as if he had been discharged 
from the service. Varvara was glad of his coming; 
she kept looking at him almost slyly and shaking her 
head. 

‘How is this?” she said. “Here’s the lad already 
twenty-eight, and still playing about as a bachelor. 
Oh, tut, tut!” 

From the adjoining room her quiet, even speech 
could be heard: “Oh, tut, tut!’ She fell to whispering 
with the old. man and Aksinia, and their faces, too, 
took on a sly, mysterious expression, as if they had 
been conspirators. 

They decided to get Anasim married. 

“Oh, tut, tut! Your younger brother has been mar- 
ried a long time,” said Varvara, “and you are with- 
out a mate still, like a cock at a fair! Why is this? 
You must marry, and then you can go back to your 
work, and your wife will stay here and help us. Your 
life is disorderly, lad; I see you have forgotten the rules. 
Oh, tut, tut! You city folks are a burden!” 

‘When the Tsibukins married, the prettiest girls were 
always picked out to be their brides, for they were rich 
people. And so, for\Anasim \likewise, a pretty girl 

38 } 


IN THE RAVINE 261 


was chosen. He himself possessed an unattractive and 
insignificant exterior. With a weak constitution) and a 
small stature, he had fat, puffy-cheeks that looked as 
if he were blowing them out; his eyes were unwinking, 
his glance was keen, his beard was sparse and red, and 
he had a habit of taking it into his mouth and biting it 
when he was thinking. In addition to this he drank, 
and this could be seen from his face and his walk. But 
(when they told him that they had found him a bride, 

and a very pretty one, he said: | 

“Well, I’m no hunchback myself. IT must say, all all 
we Tsibukins are good-looking.” \ 

In the shadow of the city lay the village of Tor- 
guyevo. Half of it had lately been absorbed by the 
town, the other half still remained a village. In a 
little house in the first half lived a widow, and with her 
lived her sister who was penniless and went out to do 
charwork by the day. This sister had a daughter 
named _Lipa,.a girl who also did charwork. Lipa’s 
beauty was already talked of in the village, but her 
appalling penury dismayed people; they reasoned that 
some widower or elderly man would marry her in spite 
of her poverty, or else would take her to live with him 
“‘so,” and in that way her mother would also be pro- 
vided for. \Varvara heard of Lipa from the professional 
matchmakers and drove to Torguyevo.. 

After this a visit of the bridegroom to the bride was 
arranged in the house of the girl’s aunt, and at this 
entertainment wine and delicacies were served, as was 


262 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


proper. Lipa was dressed in a new pink frock made 
especially for the occasion and a poppy-red ribbon. 
flamed in her hair. She was slight and frail and fair, ) 
with delicate, gentle features tanned by labour out-of- 
doors. There was ever a wistful, timid smile on her 
lips, and her eyes looked out as ‘trustfully ‘and éuriously 
as a child’s. * : 

“She was very young, a child still, with a flat little 
breast, but old enough to be married. There was no 
doubt of her prettiness, and only one thing about her 
might not prove pleasing—she had large hands, like a 
man’s, and her arms now hung idly at her sides, like 
a great pair of tongs. 

“She has no dowry, but we will overlook that,” said 
the old man to the aunt. “‘We took a girl out of a poor 
family for our son Stephen, and we will not be grasping 
in this case. In a house, as in a business, it is clever 
~ hands that count.” 

Lipa stood in the doorway and seemed to be saying, 
“Do what you want with me, I trust you,” and her 
mother, the charwoman, hid in the kitchen, swooning 
with fear. “Once, in her youth, a merchant whose floors 
she was scrubbing had lost his temper and kicked her, 
and she had been dreadfully frightened and had fainted. 
~Terror had haunted her soul ever since. Her hands 
and feet were always trembling with fear and also her 
- cheeks. As she sat in the kitchen now, trying to over- 
hear what the guests were saying, she kept crossing 
herself, pressing her hands to her brow, and glancing 


IN THE RAVINE 263 


at the icon. Anasim, slightly drunk, opened the door 
into the kitchen and said easily: 

“What are you sitting in here for, precious mother? 
We are lonely without you!” 

And the mother, Praskovia, quailed and answered, 
clasping her hands to her lean breast: 

“Oh, don’t say that, sir! Oh, indeed, we are de- 
lighted with you, sir!” 

When the visit of inspection had come to an end a 
date was fixed for the wedding. After this Anasim 
spent his days at home walking from one room to an- 
other and whistling, or else he would suddenly recollect 
something, stop, and stand plunged in meditation, 
motionless, staring fixedly out across the fields, as if 
he meant to pierce the earth with his gaze... He showed 
no pleasure at the thought of being married and being 
married soon, on the Monday after Quasimodo Sunday; 
he had no desire to see his betrothed and only continued - 
to whistle. It was plain that he was marrying simply 
because his father and stepmother desired it and be- 
cause it was the village custom for the son to marry 
and bring a helper into the house. \He was in no haste 
to leave home and did not behave in any way as he 
had on his former visits. There was something un- 
usually free and easy in his manner, and he talked 
wildly and at random. 


264 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


iil 


In a neighbouring village lived two dressmakers, sis- 
ters, from whom the wedding garments were ordered, 
and these women came often to the house to try on 
the clothes and sat for long hours drinking tea. For 
Varvara they made a brown dress trimmed with black 
lace and imitation jet and for Aksinia a light green one 
with a yellow breast and sash. When the dressmakers 
had finished their work, Tsibukin did not pay them in 
money but in wares from his store, and they left the 
house sorrowfully, with their arms full of packages of 
stearine candles and sardines for which they had no 
use in the world. When they had left the village be- 
hind them and were out in the fields, they sat down on 
a little heap of earth and began to cry. 

Anasim came home three days before the wedding, 
dressed all in new clothes. He had on shiny new rubber 
overshoes and, instead of a necktie, wore round his 
neck a red cord with little balls at the end. From his 
shoulders hung an overcoat, also new, which he had 
thrown on without putting his arms into the sleeves. 

He said a prayer gravely and then greeted his father 
and handed him ten silver roubles and ten half-rouble 
pieces. He gave the same to Varvara, and to Aksinia 
he presented twenty quarter roubles. The magnifi- 
cence of this present lay in the fact that all these were 
picked, new coins, flashing in the sunlight. “Anasim 


IN THE RAVINE 265 


tried to appear serious and sedate by composing his 
features and blowing out his cheeks, and when he did 
this he smelled of vodka; ‘he had probably run into 
some station restaurant on the way. There appeared in 
him, as before, the same lack of restraint; once more 
there seemed something exaggerated about the man. 

“They are all well,” said Anasim. ‘Every one ‘is 
all right, thank Heaven, but there has been an event in 
Yegoroff’s family; his old woman is dead—of consump- 
tion. They ordered a funeral dinner from the pastry- 
cook’s at two and a half roubles a head. And they had 
grape wine. There were some peasants from our part 
of the country there, too, and Yegoroff paid two and a 
half roubles apiece for them as well. The peasants 
didn’t eat a thing—what does a peasant understand 
about sauces?” 

“Two and a half roubles!” exclaimed the old man, 
shaking his head. 

“What of that? The city is not like a village. You 
go into a restaurant there and order one thing and 
another, a crowd collects, you all drink, and before 
you know it it is daylight and you have spent three or 
four roubles apiece. And if you’re with Samorodoff, 
he likes to finish off with a cup of coffee and cognac, 
and cognac costs sixty copecks a glass.” 

“You don’t mean it!” cried the old man, enchanted. 
*You don’t mean it!” 

“T am always with Samorodoff these days. It is 
he that writes you my letters. He writes beautifully. 


266 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


And if I were to tell you, mother, what Samorodoff 
is like,’ continued Anasim gaily, turning to Varvara, 
“you would not believe me. I know all his affairs as 
well as I know my five fingers. He follows me every- 
where; he never leaves me; and we are as thick as 
thieves. He is a little afraid of me, but he can’t live 
without me. Wherever I go he goes. Do you know, 
mother, I have a true, straight eye? If I see a peas- 
ant at a rag-fair selling a shirt, I cry: ‘Hold on! That 
shirt was stolen!’ And, sure enough, it turns out that 
it was stolen.” 

“How can you tell that?” asked Varvara. 

“I just know it; my eyes are made that way. I 
know nothing about the shirt, but somehow I am drawn 
toward it; it is stolen, and that is all. They say among 
the detectives, ‘Anasim has gone snipe shooting!’ 
That means hunting for stolen goods. Yes, any one 
can steal, but let him have a care! The world is large, 
but there is no place in it to hide stolen goods!” 

“Two rams and two ewes were stolen from Gunto- 
rieff last week,” said Varvara, and sighed. “They 
ought to be found; oh, tut, tut!” 

“Why not? They can be found. That’s nothing. 
That can be done.” 

The day of the wedding came round, a cool, clear, 
joyful April day. Since early morning vehicles drawn 
by pairs and threes of horses had been trotting about 
Ukleyevo, their bells ringing, the yokes and manes and 
tails of the horses adorned with gaudy ribbons. The 


IN THE RAVINE 267 


rooks cawed in the willows, excited by all this traffic, 
and the starlings chattered incessantly as if they were 
rejoicing that there was to be a wedding at the Tsi- 
bukins’. 

In the house the tables were laden with great fish 
and hams and stuffed birds, with boxes of sardines, 
with various salt meats and pickles, and with numerous 
bottles of vodka and different wines. The air smelled 
of smoked sausages and pickled lobsters. Around the 
tables wandered the old man, with his heels tapping on 
the floor, sharpening the knives one against the other. 

Every one was calling to Varvara and asking her 
for things, and she was running, panting and distraught, 
in and out of the kitchen, where aman cook from the 
Kostiukofis’ and a pale woman from Hrimin’s Sons 
had been working since daylight. Aksinia, in curl 
papers and a corset, with squeaky new boots but 
without a dress, was flying about the courtyard like a 
whirlwind, and all that could be seen of her was the 
flash of her bare shoulders and breast. There was 
much noise, and scolding and swearing were heard. 


People passing by paused at the open gate, and it was . 


clear from all signs that something unusual was taking 
place. 

“They have gone for the bride!” 

Carriage bells chimed, and the sound of them died 
away beyond the village. At three o’clock a crowd 
came running; again bells were heard—the bride was 
coming! The church was packed; the lustres were 


268 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


burning; the choir was singing from music at the old 
man’ s desire. Lipa was blinded by the glare of the 
\candles and the bright dresses; it seemed to her as 
though the loud voices of the choristers were thump- 
‘ing on her head; her shoes pinched; and the corset, 
Kwhich she now wore for the first time in her life, 
\quffocated her. She looked as if she had just awakened 
from a swoon, and gazed about her without compre- 
hension. Anasim, in a black coat, with a red cord for 
a necktie, stood staring absent-mindedly at one spot, 
crossing himself swiftly at every loud burst of singing. 
His heart was full of emotion and he wanted to weep. 
He had known this church since early childhood; jhis 
dead mother had brought him here to communion; 
he had sung in the choir as a boy; he remembered 
so well every little corner, every icon. And here he 
was now being married because it was proper to do so; 
but he no longer thought about this; he had forgotten 
the wedding. Tears welled up from his heart and 
strangled him, and he could no Jonger distinguish the 
icons. | He prayed and besought, God that the impend- 
ing soar which was ready to ovérwhelm him might 
somehow pass over,/as thunder-clouds pass over a vil- 
lage in time of drought. He had heaped | up so many 
sins in the past, everything seemed so unavoidable and 
irremediable, that somehow it was absurd to ask for — 
forgiveness, but he did ask it~atid’even sobbed aloud. 
“No oné heeded him; for they thought he was drunk. 
A child’s frightened weeping was heard. | 


IN THE RAVINE 269 


“Dear mummy, take me away from here, dearest!” 

“Quiet there!” cried a priest. 

The people ran behind the wedding party as it went 
home from the church, and a crowd collected around 
the store, at the gate, and in the courtyard under the 
windows of the house. The peasant women were there 
to hymn the praises of the young people. As they 
crossed the threshold the chorus that was standing in 
the hall with their music in their hands burst into song 
at the top of their lungs and the band which had been 
sent for from the city struck up a tune. Foaming 
drinks were handed about in tall goblets, and Elizaroff 
the carpenter, a tall, spare old man with eyebrows so 
thick that his eyes were scarce visible, turned to the 
young couple and said: 

“You, Anasim, and you, little child, love one another, 
live in the fear of God, my children, and the Queen 
of Heaven will not forsake you.” He fell on the old 
father’s shoulder and sobbed. “Gregory, let us weep, 
let us weep with joy!” he cried in a high voice, and 
then at once continued in a bass one: “Ho! ho! ho! 
and your bride is a beauty! Everything about her is 
in its right place; everything runs smoothly; nothing 
rattles; the whole mechanism is in order; there are 
many springs to it.” 

He was a native of the district of Yegorieff, but he 
had worked since the days of his youth in the factories 
of Ukleyevo. He had been familiar for many years 
as always the same tall, thin old man and had long 


270 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


been called Bony. Possibly because he had done 
repair work at the factory for more than forty years, 
he judged everything and everybody from a standard 
of durability and was always asking himself whether 
they needed repairing. Before sitting down he tried 
several chairs to make sure they were sound and also 
touched the fish. 

After the foaming drink, every one began to take seats ~ 
at the tables. The guests chattered as they pulled out 
their chairs; the singers shouted in the hall; the band 
played; the peasant women in the courtyard sang 
their hymns of praise all on one note—a dreadful, wild 
babel of sound arose that made the head swim. 

Bony twisted about on his chair, nudged his neigh- 
bours with his elbows and kept them from talking, and 
alternately wept and laughed. 

“Children, children, children,” he mumbled rapidly. 
““My little Aksinia, my little Varvara; let us all live in 
peace and happiness, my dear little hatchets——” 

He seldom drank and a single glass of English bitters 
had now gone to his head. These foul bitters of un- 
known manufacture stunned whoever drank them as if 
he had been hit on the head. People’s tongues began 
to trip. 

The clergy were at the party, and the factory 
clerks with their wives, and the traders and innkeep- 
ers from the neighbouring villages. ( The county.clerk, . 
who had never written a word in the fourteen years of 
his service and who had never let a man leave the 


IN THE RAVINE is ae 
county without first having cheated, him, now sat 


beside the head of the district: “Both ell werk bloated 
and fat and had fed on injustice. for so long that their 
~very ‘complexions | had taken on a strange, knavish hue. . 
The clerk’s wife, a thin woman with a squint, had” 
brought all her children with her and, like a bird of 
prey, kept one eye on the dishes, grabbing everything 
that came within reach and concealing it in her 
pockets and in those of her children. 

Lipa sat as if turned to stone, with the same look on 
her face that she had worn in the church. Anasim 
had not yet spoken a word to her, so that he did not 
know the sound of her voice; he now sat silently drink- 
ing bitters until he was drunk, and then turned to his 
bride’s aunt sitting opposite and said: 

“TI have a friend whose name is Samorodoff, a pe- 
culiar man. I see through and through him, aunt, and 
he knows it. Let us drink to the health of Samorodoff, 
aunt!” 

Varvara walked round and round the tables, helping 
the guests to the viands; she was tired and confused, 
but was evidently happy at the sight of so much food 
and magnificence. Nobody could criticise after this! 
The sun went down, but the dinner still continued. 
The guests no longer knew what they were eating and 
drinking, and what they were saying was indistinguish- 
able; only from time to time, when the music died 
down, some woman in the courtyard could be heard 


shouting: 


272 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


“They are drunk on our blood, the oppressors! 
Down with them!” ) 
In the evening they danced to the music of the band. 
Hrimin’s Sons came and brought their own wine; and 
one of them held a bottle in each hand and a wine-glass 
in his mouth while dancing the quadrille, at which 
every one laughed. In the midst of the quadrille the 
dancers suddenly leaped into a headlong peasant dance, 
and the green Aksinia whirled like a flash, her sash 
raising a wind behind her. Some one stepped on her 

flounce and ripped it off, at which Bony shouted: 

“Hey! the plinth has been torn off down there, chil- 
dren!”’. 

Aksinia’ s eyes were candid and steady and grey, and 
a naive smile was always on her lips, ‘There. was.some-— 
thing serpentine in those unwinking grey eyes, in her™ 
litheness, and in her little head on its long neck. 
‘Dressed all in green ;with her yellow breast, and a 
smile on her lips, she looked like one of those little 
green snakes that raise their heads and stretch their 
necks and peer out at the passer-by from a field of 
young rye in springtime. The Hrimins were free in 
their manner with her, and it was very clear that she 
and the eldest of them had long been in close relation- 
ship. The deaf boy understood nothing of it all and 
did not even look at her; he sat with his legs crossed, 
eating nuts and cracking them so loudly with his teeth 
that it sounded as if he were firing off a revolver. 

But now old Tsibukin himself stepped out into the 


pon IN THE RAVINE 273 


middle of the floor and waved his handkerchief as a 
signal that he, too, wanted to dance. From the whole 
house and from the crowd in the courtyard rose a shout 
of acclamation: 

“He’s dancing himself, himself!” 

Varvara danced and the old man only waved his 
handkerchief and kept time with his heels, but the 
people in the courtyard, who were clinging to one an- 
other and staring in at the windows, were transported 
with delight and for the moment forgave him every- 
thing, both his wealth and the wrongs he had done 
them. 

“Bravo, Gregory Tsibukin!” the crowd shouted. 
“That’s right! Goon! You can still work! Ha! ha!” 

It was late, two o’clock at night, before the festivi- 
ties came to an end. Anasim, staggering, made the 
round of the singers and musicians and gave each of 
them a new silver half-rouble; and the old man, who 
was not staggering, but who, nevertheless, seemed to 
be lame in one leg, saw the guests off and said to each 
one: : : : 

“The wedding cost two thousand roubles.” 

As the guests were separating some one exchanged 
an old coat for the innkeeper’s new one; Anasim flared 
up and cried: 

“Wait! Let me find it! I know who stole it! 
Wait!” 

He ran out into the street in pursuit, but they caught 
him, led him home, and thrust him, drunken and damp 


Q74 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


and flushed with anger, into the room where Lipa’s 
mother had already undressed the girl. 


IV 


Five days went by. Anasim was ready to leave, and 
went up-stairs to bid farewell ta. Varvara. |All her little 
lamps were burning and there was a may of incense in 
the room; she was sitting at the window sia iy a red 
woollen sock. 

“You haven’t stayed with us long,” she's aid.) “Ts 
it so tiresome here? Oh, tut, tut! We live weil and 
have everything in plenty, and your wedding was cele- 
brated in decency and decorum; the old man said it 
cost two thousand roubles. In a word, we live as 
merchants should, and yet it is,sad here. | We do 


the people a great deal of bara De heart, aches, ‘boy, « 


because we do them so much ng—oh, my Lord! | ) 


Whether we trade a horse or buy anything or hire a 
workman, we cheat them in everything.) We cheat, 
cheat, cheat. The sunflower oil in the store is tainted 
and bitter and more nasty than tar. Tell me, for 
Heaven’s sake, couldn’t we sell them good ves 

“Every Jack to his own trade, mamma.’ 

“Have you forgotten that some day we shall die? > 
Oh, oh! Talk to your father, do!” 

“You should talk to him yourself.” 

“I! I tell him what I think and he answers me in 
a word, as you do: every man to his trade; but God is 


just,” 
just.” 


j 
Z 


ied 


IN THE RAVINE 275 


“Of course, no one can decide what is right and 
what is wrong,” said Anasim, sighing. “There is no 
_God, anyway, so what is there to decide?” © 

Varvara looked at him in astonishment, laughing and 
clasping her hands, and he was abashed to see her so 
honestly surprised at what he had said. She was look- 
ing at him asif he were a very comical fellow, in- 
deed. feO~ 

“Perhaps there may be a God, bit people don’t be- 
lieve in him,” said Anasim. “When I was being mar- 
ried I did not feel like myself. My conscience sud- 
denly began to call as a little chicken calls in an egg 
that you take out from under a hen. All the time I 
was being married I kept thinking, ‘There is a God, 
there is a God!’ but when I came out of the church 
the feeling went, and how can I tell whether God 
exists or not? \We were not taught it in our childhood. 
When a baby is still at its mother’s breast it is only 
taught one thing—every man for himself. . My father... 
does not believe in God: You told me once that 
Guntorieff’s sheep had been stolen. I found them; 
they were stolen by a peasant from Shiskaloff, but my 
father has the hides. There’s belief in God for you!” 

Anasim blinked and shook his head. 

“And the head of the district does not believe in 
God,” he continued, “nor the clerk, nor the deacon. 
The only reason they go to church and keep the fasts 
is so that people shan’t speak ill of them and in case 
there should really happen to be a last judgment day. 


276 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


People say now that the end of the world has come 

because we are all growing weak and no longer respect 

our parents and so on, but that is nonsense. My 

opinion is, mother, that all misery comes from a lack 

of conscience. If a man is wearing a shirt that has 

been stolen, I know it. I can see through everything, } 
mother, and I know. When you see a man in a tavern 

drinking tea, he appears to you to be drinking tea and 

nothing more, but I see more than that—I see that he 

has no conscience. From morning to nightI go about 

and ‘never see a man with a conscience, and the. Teason_ 
of it alli is that no oné is“certain whether there is a 

God or not. | Well, mother, good-bye. Keep well and” 
happy and don’t think ill of me.” 

'Anasim bowed down to Varvara’s feet. 

“We thank you for everything, mother,” he said. 
“You do our family a great deal of good. You are a 
spleidid woman; I like you very much.” 

‘The agitated Anasim went out but soon came back 
and said: 

“‘Samorodoff has involved me in certain business 
affairs. I shall either be rich or I shall be undone. If 
anything should happen, mother, you must console 
my father.” 

“So that’s what it is! Oh, tut, tut! God is merci- 
ful. \You, Anasim, ought to be kinder_to. your wife; 
you glare at each other a as if you had quarrelled. _ You 
might at least smile, really.” 

“She is strange somehow,” said Anasim, sighing. 


IN THE RAVINE Q77 


“She doesn’t understand anything; she never says 
anything. She is very young yet; let her grow up.” 

A big white stallion was standing at the front door 
harnessed to a cart. 

Old Tsibukin ran out of the house, jumped in 
bravely, and took hold of the reins. Anasim kissed 
Varvara, Aksinia, and his brother. Lipa was standing 
on the door-step motionless, looking off to one side as 
if she were not there to say good-bye but had come 
out for no special reason. Anasim went up to her and 
lightly brushed her cheek with his lips. 

“Good-bye,” he said. 

She smiled strangely without looking at him; her 
lips trembled, and for some reason they all felt sorry 
for her. Anasim also jumped into the cart with a 
bound and stuck his arms akimbo, as if he thought 
himself a handsome fellow. 

As they drove up out of the ravine Anasim kept 
looking back at the village. The day was warm and 
bright. The cattle had been driven out into the fields 
for the first time that year, and the peasant girls and 
women were walking about near the herds in their 
holiday dresses. A brown bull was bellowing with 
joy at finding himself free and was pawing up the 
ground with his forefoot. Larks were singing every- 
where, above and below. Anasim looked back at the 
pretty white church—it had been freshly whitewashed 
—and remembered how he had prayed there five days 
since; he looked back at the school with its green roof 


278 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


and at the little river in which he had so often bathed 
and fished. Joy surged up in his breast, and he wished 
that a wall might suddenly rise up out of the ground 
and bar his onward way so that he might be left with 
the past alone. 

At the station father and son went into the restau- 
rant and each had a glass of sherry. The old man felt 
in his pocket for his purse, but Anasim cried: 

“My treat!” ‘ 

The old man patted him on the shoulder with emo- 
tion and looked around the little room as much as to 
say: 

“See what a son I have!” 

“Stay at home and work at our business, Anasim,” 
he said. “I will heap you with riches from head to 
foot, little son.” 

“TI can’t possibly, daddy.” 

The sherry was sour and smelled of sealing-wax, but 
each finished his glass. 

On his return from the station the old man did not 
at first sight recognise his younger daughter-in-law. 
Her husband had no sooner driven out of the courtyard 
than Lipa had suddenly changed and grown merry. 
She was barefoot now, dressed in an old, worn skirt, 
with her sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, and was 
scrubbing down the front steps and singing in a high, 
silvery voice. As she came out of the house with a 
big wash-tub in her arms and looked up at the sun 
with her childlike smile she, too, seemed a little lark. 


IN THE RAVINE 279 


An old workman who was passing the front door 
shook his head and grunted: 

“Your sons’ brides have been sent you by Heaven, 
master,” he said. “They are not women but treasures 
of gold.” 


V 
On a Friday, the eighth day of July, Elizaroff, or 


Bony, and Lipa were returning together from a pil- 
grimage to the village of Kazanski, where they had 
been celebrating the festival of the Virgin of Kazan. 
Far in the rear walked Lipa’s mother, Praskovia; she 
was always left behind, for she was infirm and short of 
breath. It was near evening. 

“Ah!” exclaimed Bony, listening to Lipa. “Ah! 
And what gag Pe a 

“I love jam,” Lipa was telling him. “I often sit 
in a corner at home and drink tea with jam init. Or 
else Varvara and I drink tea together and she tells me 
strange stories. They havea great deal of jam there— 
four jars full! They say to me: ‘Eat all you want, 
Lipa! Don’t stint yourself!’ ” 

“Ah! So they have four jars?” 

“They are rich. They eat white bread with their 
tea and have as much meat as they want. They are 
rich, but I_am_ always frightened there. Whew, but 
I’m frighténed!” 

“Why are you frightened, child?” asked Bony, 


280 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


looking round to see whether Praskovia had been left 
far behind. 

“At first, during the wedding, I was frightened by 
Anasim. He was very nice and never did me any harm, 
but whenever he came near me I felt the shivers run- 
ning all up and down my back. I did not sleep a single 
night when he was here, and only lay and shook and 
prayed. And now I am afraid of Aksinia. She is very 
nice, but she looks in at the window sometimes, and her 
eyes are so angry and glow as green as the eyes of 
a sheep in a stall. Hrimin’s Sons say to her: ‘Your 
old man has a bit of land at Butekino with sand and 
water on it. Build a brick-yard there, Aksinia, and 
we will go shares with you.’ Bricks are twenty roubles 
a thousand novw;; it is a profitable business. Yesterday 
at dinner Aksinia said to the old man: ‘I want to build 
a brick-yard at Butekino. I’m going into business 
myself.’ She laughed as she said that, but the old 
man’s face grew black; one could see he didn’t like it. 
“As long as I am alive,’ he said, ‘we can’t work apart; 
we must all hold together!’ Her eyes flashed and she 
gnashed her teeth. When the custard was brought on 
she wouldn’t eat any.” 

“Ah!” exclaimed Bony. “She wouldn’t eat any?” 

“Then, at night, what do you suppose she does?” 
Lipa went on. “She sleeps half an hour and then 
jumps up and walks and walks, and looks and looks, 
to make sure that the peasants haven’t set fire to any- 
thing or haven’t stolen anything. She is frightful to 


IN THE RAVINE 981 


live with, daddy! Hrimin’s Sons did not go to bed 
the night after the wedding; they went to town to open 
a law-suit, and people say it was all because of her. 
Two of the brothers promised to build her the brick- 
yard, and the third brother got angry about it, and the 
factory has been closed for a month, and my uncle 
Prokor is without work and has to go begging from 
door to door. ‘You ought to go and plough or chop 
wood in the meantime, uncle,’ I tell him. ‘Why do 
you disgrace yourself?’ ‘No,’ he says, ‘I’ve got out 
of the way of Christian work now; there’s nothing I 
can do, Lipa!’ ” 

They halted near a grove of aspens to rest and wait 
for Praskovia. Elizaroff did not keep a horse although 
he had long been a contractor; he went striding all 
over the country on foot, swinging his arms and carry- 
ing a little sack in which he kept onions and bread. 
It was hard, in walking, to keep pace with him. 

At the entrance to the wood stood a boundary post; 
Elizaroff touched it to see whether it were in need of 
repairs. Praskovia came up panting. Her wrinkled, 
perpetually startled face glowed with pleasure. She 
had been to church to-day like other folk and had seen 
the fair and had drunk pear beer there! This had 
seldom happened to her, and it even seemed to her 
now as though she had enjoyed herself this day for 
the first time in her life. When they were rested all 
three walked on together. The sun was setting and its 
rays struck through the wood and gleamed on the 


282 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


trunks of the trees. Voices rang out ahead of them. 
The young girls of Ukleyevo had gone on far ahead, 
but they had made a halt in the woods, no doubt to 
pick mushrooms. 

“Halloo, girls!” shouted Elizaroff. “Halloo, my 
beauties!” | 

He was answered by laughter. 

“Here comes Bony! Bony! The old crow!” 

And the echoes laughed, too. And now the wayfarers 
left the wood behind them. The tops of the factory 
chimneys were already in sight; the cross flashed on 
the steeple; there lay the village “where the deacon 
had eaten all the caviare at the funeral.” They were 
nearly home now; there remained but to climb down 
into that deep ravine. Lipa and Praskovia, who were 
barefooted, sat down to put on their shoes and the 
carpenter sat down beside them. Seen from above, 
Ukleyevo looked pretty and peaceful, with its willows 
and its white church and its little river, but the view 
was spoilt by the roofs of the factories, which were 
painted a sombre grey for economy’s sake. On the 
far slope of the ravine lay fields of rye with the grain 
in stacks, in scattered sheaves, and in freshly mown 
rows; the oats, too, were ripe and the fields shim- 
mered like mother-of-pearl in the sunlight. It was har- 
vest-time. The day had been a holiday; the next day 
would be Saturday, and then they would rake up the 
rye and haul away the hay. Then Sunday would come, 
another holiday. Each day was steamy and hot, with 


IN THE RAVINE 283 


thunder growling in the distance; the weather threat- 
ened rain. Men wondered, looking at the fields, 
whether God would give them time to get in their 
grain and felt both merry and anxious at heart. 

“The mowers ask high wages now,” Praskovia re- 
marked. “One rouble forty copecks a day.” 

The villagers were flocking home from the fair at 
Kazanski: peasant women, factory hands wearing new 
caps, beggars, and children. Now a wagon drove by, 
raising a cloud of dust, with a horse trotting behind 
that seemed to be glad he had not been sold at the fair; 
now came a man leading a stubborn cow by the horns; 
‘now another wagon laden with drunken peasants dan- 
gling their feet over the sides. An old woman passed 
leading by the hand a little boy in a big hat and big 
boots; the child was exhausted with the heat and by 
his heavy boots, which prevented him from bending 
his legs at the knee, but he was incessantly blowing a 
little toy trumpet with all his might. After the pair 
had reached the bottom of the ravine and had turned 
into the street the trumpet could still be heard blowing. 
_  “Qur manufacturers are in a bad temper,” said 

Elizaroff. “It’s a misery! Kostiukoff has been abus- 
ing me for putting too many planks into a cornice. 
‘Too many planks, indeed!’ said I to him. ‘No, 
sir,’ says I, ‘as many went into it as belonged to go in 
and no more. I don’t eat planks with my porridge!’ 
I says. ‘How can you say that,’ says he, ‘you block- 
head? Don’t forget yourself! Itwas I made you a con- 


284 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


tractor!’ he shouts. ‘And a fine thing you did there!’ 
says I. ‘Didn’t I have tea every day just the same 
before I became a contractor?’ ‘You are all cheats!’ 
he cried. I said nothing. ‘We are all cheats in this 
world,’ I thought, ‘but you will be cheated in the next!’ 
Ho! ho! ho! Next day he felt better. ‘Don’t be 
angry with me,’ he said, ‘about what I said to you 
yesterday. If I said more than I should, remember 
that I am a merchant of the first guild. I am your 
superior and you must hold your tongue.’ ‘You are 
right,’ I says. ‘You are a merchant of the first guild 
and I am a carpenter, but the holy Joseph was a car- 
penter, too,’ saysI. ‘Our work is honest and godly 
work, but you wish to be my superior!’ says I. ‘You 
are welcome.’ But after that conversation I began to 
wonder who was the superior, a carpenter or a mer- 


chant of the first guild. Perhaps a carpenter is, chil- 


n. bb af 
<|-sl reflected awhile and then added: 
‘He is the superior, children. He who'Tabours and 


endures i is the superior.” 


The sun had-gone down and a thick mist as white 
as milk hung over the river and lay in the churchyard 
and on the meadows around the factories. Night was 
swiftly falling, little lights began to shine out in the 
ravine, and the fog seemed to be concealing a bottom- 
less abyss. \Lipa and.her.mother had been born beg- 
gars and had beén ready to live as beggars all their lives, 
ready to surrender everything to others except_ their 


~ 
seat a eee 


IN THE RAVINE 285 


meek, timid so souls, but now, perhaps, they dreamed 
for an instant that in this great, mysterious world 
they, too, had power and were ofr to some one. 
They were happy, sitting there above'the village, and 
smiled joyously and forgot that they ‘must descend to 
the bottom once more. 

They turned homeward at last. A crowd of mowers 
were sitting on the ground at the gates of the courtyard 
and around the store. The peasants of Ukleyevo 
usually refused to work for Tsibukin and he had to 
hire labourers elsewhere, so they sat there now looking, 
among the shadows, like men with long, black beards. 
The store was open and the deaf son could be seen 
through the door playing checkers with a little boy. 
The mowers now sang softly, almost inaudibly, now 
loudly demanded their day’s wages, but these no one 
gave them because the men were wanted for the next 
day. Tsibukin, in a waistcoat and no coat, was sitting 
with Aksinia under a birch-tree near the front door- 
steps drinking tea. A lamp was burning on the table. 

“Dad-dy!” called one of the mowers outside the 
gate in a teasing voice. “Pay us, if it’s only half! 
Dad-dy!” At this the other mowers laughed and then 
began to sing again softly. Bony sat down to drink 
tea. 

“We have been to the fair,” he began. “We have 
been on a spree, children, a jolly spree, the Lord be 
praised. But one unfortunate thing happened. Sashka 
the blacksmith bought some tobacco and gave the mer- 


286 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


chant he bought it of half a rouble for it. The coin 
proved to be false,” Bony went on, glancing around. 
He had meant to whisper, but had spoken, instead, in 
a hoarse, choking voice and every one had heard him. 
**And the coin proved to be false. Sashka was asked 
where he had got it. ‘Anasim Tsibukin gave it to me 
at his wedding,’ he said. A policeman was called 
and he was arrested. Take care, Tsibukin, that some- 
thing doesn’t come of it!” 

““Dad-dy!” teased the same voice outside the gate. 
“Dad-dy!” 

Silence fell. 

“Ah, children, children, children!’”” mumbled Bony 
rapidly as he rose from his seat. Sleep was overpower- 
ing him. “It’s time for bed. I am rotting and my 
beams are crumbling! Ho! ho! ho!” 

As he walked away he said: 

“It’s time to die, I suppose,” and at that he sobbed. 

Old Tsibukin did not finish drinking his tea; he 
sat thinking, and, from his expression, seemed to be 
listening to the footfalls of Bony, who was _ now 
far down the street. 

“Sashka the blacksmith was lying, peat said 
Aksinia, divining his thoughts. 

He went into the house and soon came out again 
carrying a little package. This he opened; it was full 
of shining new roubles. He took one, tried it between 
his teeth, rang it on the tray, and then rang another. 

“Yes,” he said, looking at Aksinia as if he still 


IN THE RAVINE 287 


doubted it. “The coins are false. These are the ones 
that— Anasim brought these home; they are his pres- 
ent. Take them, daughter,” he whispered, slipping the 
package into her hands. “Take them and throw them 
into the well. Away with them! And see that there 
is no talk about this. Something might happen. Take 
away the samovar; put out the lights.” 

Lipa and Praskovia, sitting in an outhouse, saw the 
lights go out one by one; up in Varvara’s room only 
the little red and blue shrine lamps were still burn- 
ing, and from thence breathed peace and contentment 
and ignorance. Praskovia never could get used to 
the fact that her daughter had married a rich man, 
and when she came to his house would hide herself in 
the hallway with a beseeching smile on her face and 
her tea and sugar would be sent out to her. Neither 
could Lipa grow accustomed to this life, and she did 
not sleep in her bed after her husband’s departure, but 
lay down wherever she happened to be—in the kitchen 
or in an outhouse. Every day she washed the clothes 
or scrubbed the floors and felt that she still was a 
charwoman. And now, after their return from their 
pilgrimage, they drank their tea in the kitchen with 
the cook and then went into an outhouse and lay down 
on the floor between the sleighs and the wall. It was 
already dark and the air smelled of harness. The lights 
went out near the house and they could hear the deaf 
boy closing the store and the mowers disposing them- 
selves for the night in the courtyard. Far away in 


288 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


the distance Hrimin’s Sons were playing on their ex- 
pensive accordion. Praskovia and Lipa were drop- 
ping asleep when they were awakened by the sound of 
footsteps. The moon was now shining brightly. At 
the door of the outhouse stood Aksinia with her bed- 
clothes in her arms. 

“Perhaps it will be cooler here,” she said and came 
into the outhouse and lay down near the threshold with 
the moon shining full upon her. 

She could not go to sleep but sighed grievously and 
lay tossing to and fro in the heat and at last threw off 
most of what she had over her. What a gorgeous, 
proud animal she looked in the magic light of the moon! 
A short time passed and again steps were heard. The 
old man appeared, all in white, in the doorway. 

“Aksinia,” he called, “are you here?” 

“What is it?” she answered crossly. 

“T told you yesterday evening to throw the money 
into the well. Did you do it?” 

“The idea of throwing property into the water! I 
gave it to the mowers.” 

“Oh, my God!” groaned the old man in fear and per- 
plexity. “You insolent woman—oh, my God!” 

He wrung his hands and walked away, muttering as 
he went. Aksinia sat up, sighing heavily with vexa- 
tion, and then got up and gathered up her bedclothes 
and went out. 

“Why did you marry me into this house, mother?” 
asked Lipa. 


IN THE RAVINE 289 


“A girl must marry, my daughter. It is none of 
our doing.” 

A feeling of inconsolable anguish was about to over- 
whelm them, but it seemed to them as if out of the 
vault of the dark-blue heaven above them, there where 
the stars were, some one was watching everything that 
went on in Ukleyevo a and was keeping ‘guard over them. 
Though evil is mighty, night is peaceful and beautiful, 
and there~exists a justice on God’s earth which is as 
peaceful ‘and as beautiful as the night; everything in 
the world is waiting to join hands with that justice, 
as the moonlight joins hands with the night. 

Both women were quieted and fell peacefully asleep 
in each other’s arms. 


VI 


‘The news had come long ago that Anasim had been 
sent to prison for forgery. Months went by, half a 
year went by. The long’ Winter had passed, spring had 
come, and in Anasim’s home and in the village people 
had grown used to the thought that he was in prison. 
If any one passed his house at night he would remem- 
ber that Anasim was in prison; if the bells tolled in 
the cemetery people would recall for some reason that 
Anasim was in prison, awaiting his trial. 

A shadow seemed to hang over the house of the 
Tsibukins. The rooms were darker, the roof was 
rusty, and even old Tsibukin himself seemed somehow 


290 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


more sombre in hue. He had long neglected to trim 
his beard and hair; he climbed into his cart now with- 
out a bound and no longer cried to the beggars that 
“God would help them!” His strength was failing, 
and this could be seen in everything. Men feared him 
less now, and a warrant had been issued against him 
ceived his little bribe as before. Tsibukin was sent to 
the city to be tried; the case was continually being 
postponed in default of witnesses and tormented the 
old man. 

He often went to see his son and began doing many 
little deeds of charity. He took the keeper of Anasim’s 
prison 2 silver holder for a glass, with a long spoon and 
an imscription in enamel. 

“There is no one to do anything for him,” said Var- 
vara. “Oh, tut, tut! We might ask some one of the 
gentry to do something or write to the chief of police. 
They might at least set him free till his trial Why 
should the boy be made to suffer so?” 

She, too, was distressed, but nevertheless she grew 
stouter, and her complexion grew fairer; she still 
lighted her little lamps and kept the house clean and 
treated her guests to apple butter and jam. The deaf 
boy and Aksimia now kept the store. They had 
started a new business: a brick-yard had been opened 
at Buiekino, and thither Aksinia drove herself every 
day im 2 carriage; when she met an acquaintance on 
the road she would stretch out her neck, as a little 


IN THE RAVINE 291 


snake does from a field of young rye, and smile naively 
and enigmatically. Lipa spent her days playing with 
her child, which had been born to her before Lent. 
He was a wee baby, pitiful and thin, and it seemed 
strange to think that he could cry and see and was 
looked upon as a human being and even bore the name 
of Nikifor. Lipa used to go to the door as he lay in his 
cradle and bow and say: 

“Good morning, Nikifor Tsibukin!” 

And then she would fly back and kiss him and once 
more go to the door and bow and say: 

“Good morning, Nikifor Tsibukin!” 

And the baby would scratch his pink feet, and his 
laughter and tears would mingle together as they did 
with Elizaroff the carpenter, 

At last a date was set for the trial. The old man 
left home for five days, and some of the peasants were 
called from the village to be witnesses; among them 
was the old carpenter, who had also received a summons, 

The trial had been fixed for Thursday, but Sunday 
went by and still the old man had not returned, and no 
news had come. On Tuesday evening Varvara was 
sitting at the open window listening for his return. 
Lipa was playing with her baby in the next room, 
tossing him in her arms and crying in ecstasy: 

“You'll grow up to be a big, big man! When you're 
a big peasant, then we'll go out and do charwork to- 
gether! Yes, we will!” 

“Look here!” said Varvara, offended, ‘What is 


294 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


of impatience. ‘‘When Anasim was sentenced I went 
to a gentleman who had defended him, but he said 
that nothing could be done; it was too late. And 
Anasim himself said the same thing: it was too late. 
But I did engage a lawyer as soon as I came out of the 
court and paid him a retaining fee. I shall wait a week, 
and then I shall go back to town again. God’s will be 
done!” 

The old man again walked silently through all the 
rooms, and when he came back to Varvara he said: 

“T must be ill. There is something wrong in my 
head—things seem confused there—I can’t think 
straight.” 

He shut the door, so that Lipa should not hear, and 
went on in a low voice: 

“I’m not right about money. Do you remember 
that Anasim brought me a lot of new roubles and half- 
rouble pieces before his wedding? I put away one 
packet of them at the time, and the rest I mixed with 
my other money. I used to have an uncle named 
Dimitri, who, when he was still living—God rest his 
soul!—used to travel all over the country buying 
merchandise, from Moscow to the Crimea. He was 
married, and while he was away travelling his wife 
used to amuse herself with other men. My uncle had 
six children. Well, when he had been drinking he used 
to laugh and say: ‘I can’t for the life of me make out 
which of these are my children and which belong to 
the others.” He was a light character, you see. Well, 


IN THE RAVINE 295 


and so it is with me; I can’t for the life of me tell which 
of my money is real and which is false. It all seems 
false to me.” 

“God bless you! What a notion!” 

“Tf I buy a ticket at the station and give three rou- 
bles for it I think the coins are false. I am frightened. 
I must be ill.” 

“We are all in the hands of God. Oh, tut, tut!” 
said Varvara, shaking her head. “We must think 
about this, Gregory. Some misfortune might happen; 
you are not a young man. If you were to die the 
others might do some harm to your grandson. Oh, I 
am afraid for Nikifor! They will wrong him! In a 
way he has no father, and his mother is foolish and 
young. You ought to secure something to the boy, if 
it’s only your land, Butekino, for example. Yes, Greg- 
ory, really! Think of it!” Varvara entreated. “He is 
such a pretty boy; it’s a pity! Do go tomorrow and 
make a will! Why wait?” 

“TI had forgotten my grandson,” said Tsibukin. “I 
must say good evening to him. So you say he’s a 
pretty boy? Well, I hope he'll live to grow up. God 
grant it!” 

He opened the door and beckoned Lipa to him with 
his forefinger. She came toward him with her baby 
in her arms. 

“Tf you need anything you must ask for it, little 
Lipa,” he said. “Eat all you can; we don’t begrudge 
you anything, so long as you keep well.”” He made the 


294 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


of impatience. ‘‘When Anasim was sentenced I went 
to a gentleman who had defended him, but he said 
that nothing could be done; it was too late. And 
Anasim himself said the same thing: it was too late. 
But I did engage a lawyer as soon as I came out of the 
court and paid him a retaining fee. I shall wait a week, 
and then I shall go back to town again. God’s will be 
done!”’ 

The old man again walked silently through all the 
rooms, and when he came back to Varvara he said: 

“TI must be ill. There is something wrong in my 
head—things seem confused there—I can’t think 
straight.” 

He shut the door, so that Lipa should not hear, and 
went on in a low voice: 

“I’m not right about money. Do you remember 
that Anasim brought me a lot of new roubles and half- 
rouble pieces before his wedding? I put away one 
packet of them at the time, and the rest I mixed with 
my other money. I used to have an uncle named 
Dimitri, who, when he was still living—God rest his 
soul!—used to travel all over the country buying 
merchandise, from Moscow to the Crimea. He was 
married, and while he was away travelling his wife 
used to amuse herself with other men. My uncle had 
six children. Well, when he had been drinking he used 
to laugh and say: ‘I can’t for the life of me make out 
which of these are my children and which belong to 
the others.” He was a light character, you see. Well, 


IN THE RAVINE 295 


and so it is with me; I can’t for the life of me tell which 
of my money is real and which is false. It all seems 
false to me.” 

“God bless you! What a notion!” 

“Tf I buy a ticket at the station and give three rou- 
bles for it I think the coins are false. I am frightened. 
I must be ill.” 

“We are all in the hands of God. Oh, tut, tut!” 
said Varvara, shaking her head. “‘We must think 
about this, Gregory. Some misfortune might happen; 
you are not a young man. If you were to die the 
others might do some harm to your grandson. Oh, I 
am afraid for Nikifor! They will wrong him! In a 
way he has no father, and his mother is foolish and 
young. You ought to secure something to the boy, if 
it’s only your land, Butekino, for example. Yes, Greg- 
ory; really! Think of it!” Varvara entreated. “He is 
such a pretty boy; it’sa pity! Do go tomorrow and 
make a will! Why wait?” 

“T had forgotten my grandson,” said Tsibukin. “I 
must say good evening to him. So you say he’s a 
pretty boy? Well, I hope he'll live to grow up. God 
grant it!” 

He opened the door and beckoned Lipa to him with 
his forefinger. She came toward him with her baby 
in her arms. 

“If you need anything you must ask for it, little 
Lipa,” he said. “Eat all you can; we don’t begrudge 
you anything, so long as you keep well.” He made the 


296 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


sign of the cross over the baby. “Take good care of 
my little grandson. My son is gone, but my grandson 
is left.” 

The tears were coursing down his cheeks now; he 
sobbed and turned away. Ina little while he lay down 
and slept heavily after his seven sleepless nights. 


VII 


/ The old man made only a short visit to the city. 
Some one informed Aksinia that he had been to the 
fiotary to make a will and had left Butekino to his 
grandson, Nikifor.\ She was told this one morning 
when the old man and Varvara were sitting under the 
birchtree at the front door-steps drinking tea. She 
shut the door of the store that led into the street and 
the door that led into the courtyard, collected all her 
keys, and flung them down at the feet of the old man. 
“I won’t work in your house any longer!” she 
shouted vehemently ‘and suddenly burst into tears. 
“It seems I am not your daughter-in-law, but a ser- 
vant.) Everybody is laughing at me: they say, ‘Look 
at that servant the Tsibukins have found!’ I did not 
hire myself out to you! I am not a beggar or a penni- 
less wench—I have a mother and father.” 
She fixed her angry, tear-filled eyes on the old man 
without troubling to wipe them; her face and neck were 
flushed and tense as if she had been yelling with all her 


might. 


IN THE RAVINE 997 


“TI won’t be a servant any longer!” she continued. 
“T am run off my feet! When it comes to work, then 
I have to sit day in and day out in the store and sneak 
out at night after vodka, but when it comes to receiving 
land, the convict’s wife gets it with her devil’s spawn! 
She is the mistress here and a fine lady, and I am her 
servant. Give the prisoner’s wife everything, and let 
her choke on it! I am going home. Find another fool 
for yourselves, you damned scoundrels!” 

The old man had never in his life scolded or aes ie 
his children, and had not imagined that a member of 
his family could speak rudely to him or treat him dis- 
respectfully. He was terribly frightened now and ran 
into the house, where he hid behind a cupboard. Var- 
vara was so appalled that she could not rise from her 
seat and only kept brandishing both arms as if she 
were defending herself from a swarm of bees. 

“Oh, oh, what is the matter?” she murmured in 
horror. “What is she shrieking so for? Oh, tut, tut! 
People will hear you! Oh, be quiet, be quiet!” 

“You have given Butekino to the convict’s wife!” 
Aksinia shouted on. “Now give her everything; I 
don’t want a thing from you! Bad luck to you! You 
are nothing but a gang of thieves. [ve had enough of 
it. I’ve done with you all. You rob all who come near 
you, old and young, you pickpockets! Who sells vodka 
without a license? Who commits forgery? You have 
stuffed your coffers full of false coins, and now you no 
longer need me!” ‘ 


298 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


By this time a crowd had gathered around the open 
gates, and the villagers were staring into the courtyard. 

“Let the people see!” shrieked Aksinia. “I will 
heap shame on your heads! You shall burn with it! 
I will make you grovel at my feet! Hi! Stephen!” 
she called to the deaf boy. “We are going home this 
minute to my father and mother; I won’t live with 
convicts! Get ready!” 

The washing was hanging out on a line that was 
stretched across the courtyard. She snatched down her 
blouses and skirts and flung them to the deaf boy and 
then flew about the courtyard in a frenzy among the 
clothes, tearing everything down, throwing everything 
that was not hers on the ground and trampling on it. 

“Oh, the Lord have mercy! Take her away!” 
groaned Varvara. “Give her back Butekino! Give 
it back to her for Christ’s sake!” 

“Ah-ha, what a woman!” exclaimed the neighbours 
at the gate. ‘“‘How furious she is! She’s a terror!” 

Aksinia ran into the kitchen where the clothes were 
being washed. Lipa was working there alone, the cook 
had gone down to the river to rinse the clothes. Steam 
was rising from the wash-tub and from the boiler near 
the stove, and the air of the kitchen was stifling and 
dense with vapour. A pile of soiled clothes lay on the 
floor, and near them on a bench sprawled Nikifor play- 
ing with his rosy feet, laid down there so tha < 
could not hurt himself if he fell off the bench. Lipa 
was picking a chemise of Aksinia’s out of the pile of 


IN THE RAVINE 299 


clothes as the other came into the kitchen; she put 
it into the tub and stretched out her hand for the big 
scoop of boiling water that lay on the table. 

“Give it to me!” shouted Aksinia looking at her 
with hatred and dragging her chemise out of the tub. 
“You have no business to touch my clothes! You are 
a convict’s wife: you ought to know your place and 
who you are!” 

Lipa looked at her mildly without comprehension, 
but all at once, as she caught the glance which the 
woman threw at her baby, she suddenly understood 
and turned pale as death. 

“You have taken my land, take this!” 

Saying these words, Aksinia seized the ladle of boil- 
ing -water.and dashed it over Nikifor. sy 

“At this a shriek went up the like of which had never 
been heard in Ukleyevo, and no one could have believed 
that a weak little creature like Lipa could have uttered 
such a cry. 

Silence suddenly fell over the courtyard. Aksinia 
went into the house without saying a word, with the 
same naive smile on her face. The deaf boy was stroll- 
ing about the courtyard with his arms full of clothes. 
He silently and without haste proceeded to hang them 
out once more. And until the cook came back from 
the river no one dared go into the kitchen to see what 
hati fppened there. 


800 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


Vill 


Nikifor was taken to the county hospital and died 
there that evening. Lipa did not wait for any one to 
come for her but wrapped the little body in a blanket 
and started to carry it home. 

The hospital was new, with large windows, and stood 
high on a hill. It was gleaming now in the rays of the 
setting sun and seemed to be ablaze on the inside. A 
little village lay at the foot of the hill. Lipa walked 
down the road and before she came to the village sat 
down on the edge of a pond. A woman came leading 
a horse to the water, but the horse refused to drink. 

“What more do you want?” asked the woman softly 
and wonderingly. “What do you want?” 

A boy in a red shirt sat at the water’s edge washing 
his father’s boots. Not another soul was in sight either 
in the village or on the hill. 

“He isn’t drinking,” Lipa said to herself, watching 
the horse. 

The woman and the boy departed, and now no one 
was to be seen. The sun sank to rest and folded him- 
self in a tissue of gold and purple, and long crimson and 
lilac clouds lay stretched across the sky, guarding his 
sleep. A bittern was booming in the far distance 
dully and lugubriously, like a cow in a shed. The cry 
of that mysterious bird resounded every spring, but 
no one knew what sort of a creature it was nor where it 


IN THE RAVINE 301 


had its abode. The nightingales were pouring forth 
their songs on the hilltop, in the bushes around the 
pond, beyond the village, and in the fields on either 
hand. A cuckoo was counting and counting and always 
losing count and commencing again. The frogs in the 
pond were splitting their throats in a frantic chorus, 
and one could even distinguish the words they were 
shouting: “Ee tee takova! Ee tee takova!” Whata 
din there was! Every living being seemed to be shout- 
ing and singing on purpose to keep any creature from 
sleeping this evening of spring, so that all, even the 
angry frogs, might enjoy every minute of it—after all, 
one can live but one life! 

A silver crescent moon was gleaming, and stars with- 
out number were shining in the sky. Lipa did not re- 
member how long she had been sitting by the pond, but 
when she arose and walked on, the village was already 
asleep and no lights were burning. 

She was probably about nine miles from home, but 
her strength was exhausted, and she had no idea in 
which direction to go. The moon hung now on her 
right and now before her, and the same cuckoo was 
crying, though hoarsely by now: “Oho! Look out, 
you're off the road!’’ Lipa hurried on, and the ker- 
chief slipped from her head. She looked up at the sky 
and wondered where the soul of her boy now was. 
Was he walking behind her or was he floating up there 
overhead near the stars, already forgetful of his mother? 
Oh, how lonely it was at night in the fields, in the ~ 


» 


802 © STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


midst of all this singing, for one who could not sing! 
How lonely among these incessant shouts of gladness - 
for one who could not rejoice! The moon looked 
down from heaven and was lonely, too; it did not 
care whether the season were winter or spring or 
whether people were dead or alive. It is sad to be 
alone when the heart is full of misery. If only her 
mother were with her, thought Lipa, or Bony, or the 
cook, or some peasant! 

““Boo-oo! Boo-oo!” cried the bittern. 

Suddenly a man’s voice became clearly audible, say- 
ing: 

“Harness the horses, Vavila!” 

A camp-fire burned before Lipa on the side of the 
road. The flames had already died down, and only 
the red embers were still glowing. She could hear 
horses munching. Two men and two carts were visi- 
ble in the darkness; one cart carried a barrel, and the 
other, smaller one was laden with sacks. One man 
was leading a horse to be harnessed, the other was 
standing by the fire with his hands behind his back. 
A dog growled near the carts. The man who was lead- 
ing the horse stopped and said: 

“‘T think some one is coming along the road.” 

“‘Sharik, be still!” the other man called to the dog, 
and from his voice it could be heard that he was old. 
Lipa stopped and cried: 

“Help, in God’s name!” 

The old man approached her and said after a pause: 


IN THE RAVINE ; 303 


“Good evening!” 

“Will your dog bite?” 

“No, come on! He won’t touch you.” 

“TI have been to the hospital,” said Lipa after a 
silence. “My little boy died there. I am carrying 
him home.” | 

This must have been unpleasant for the old man to 
hear, for he drew back and said hastily: 

“That is nothing, my dear. It is God’s will. You 
are dawdling, boy!” he cried, turning to his companion. 
“Be quick!” 

“Your yoke isn’t here,” cried the lad. “I can’t find 
sg 

“Your wagon is on the right-hand side, Vavila.” 

The old man picked up a brand and blew on it, and a 
light glowed on his eyes and nose. When the yoke had 
been found he went back to Lipa, carrying the brand, 
and looked into her face. His glance was compassion- 
ate and tender. 

“You are a mother,” he said. “A mother is always 
sad at the loss of her child.” } ? 

He sighed as he said this and shook his head. 
Vavila threw something on the fire and stamped it out. 
The night suddenly grew very black, the vision van- 
ished, and nothing remained but the fields, the sky with 
its stars, and the noisy birds keeping each other awake. 
A rail began calling on the very spot, it seemed, where 
the camp-fire had been burning. 

But before a minute had elapsed the old man and 


304 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


the tall Vavila became visible once more. The wagons 
creaked as they hauled out into the road. 

**Are you holy men?” Lipa inquired of the old man. 

“No, we are peasants from Firsanoff.” 

“My heart melted when you looked at me a little 
while ago. And that is a quiet lad. So I thought you 
were holy men.” 

“Have you far to go?” 

“To Ukleyevo.” 

“Get in! We'll take you as far as Krenidutle Your 
road branches off to the right there and ours to the 
left.” 

Vavila mounted the wagon with the barrel, and the 
old man and Lipa got into the other. They travelled 
at a foot-pace, with Vavila ahead. 

“My little son suffered all day,” said Lipa. “He 
looked at me so with his little eyes and could not utter 
a sound. He wanted to say something and couldn’t. 
Holy Mother of God! I fell to the floor with grief. 
I was standing by the bedside and fell down. Tell me, 
daddy, why should a baby-suffer before he dies?) When 
a grown person, a man or a woman, suffers his sins 
are forgiven him, but why should a little one suffer 
that has no sins? Why?” 

“Who can say?” answered the old man. 

‘They travelled on for half an hour in silence. 

_“Qne cannot know the reason for everything,” said 
the-old man. © A bird is not given four wings but two, 
because two are all that he needs to fly with, “and™so 


eee 
- 5 aeey 


IN THE RAVINE 305 


people are not allowed to know everything but only a 
‘half_or a quarter. Everybody knows as much as he 


needs to know in order to live.” eo 

“Daddy! It is easier for me to walk! My heart 
beats so!” 

“Never mind! Sit still.” 

The old man yawned and made the sign of the cross 
over his mouth. 

“Never mind,” he repeated. “Your grief is only 
half a grief. Life is long. You_will yet_have good 
times and bad times. 7 You will have a little of every-_ 

“thing: Russia is a a mighty mother!” he said, looking 
around him. “And I have travelled over all Russia 
and have seen everything. You can believe my words, 
child, you will have good times yet and bad times. I 
have been to Siberia on foot. I have been on the Amur 
River and in the Altai Mountains; I emigrated to 
Siberia and tilled the soil there, but my heart was 
heavy for mother Russia, and I went back to my native 
village. I went back on foot. I remember I was cross- 
ing a river once on a ferry-boat, all thin and ragged and 
shivering, gnawing a crust of bread, and a gentleman 
who was on the same boat—God rest his soul if he is 
dead!—looked at me with compassion and with the 
tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘Alas!’ he cried. 
“Your bread is black, and black are your days.” When 
I got back I had neither hut nor home. I had had a 
wife before, but I had left her behind me in Siberia; 
we buried her there. So now I hire myself out as a day- 


306 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


labourer. And what of it? I tell you I have had good 
times and bad times since then. I don’t want to die, 
child. I could live twenty years more, so that means 
there has been more good than bad in my life. Rus- 
sia is a mighty mother!” he said and once more looked 
from side to side. 

“Daddy,” asked Lipa, “when a man dies, how many 
days does his soul stay on earth?” 

“Who can say? Let us ask Vavila. He has been 
to school, and they teach everything now. Vavila!” 
the old man called. 

“esr. 

“Vavila, when a man dies, how many days does his 
soul stay on earth?” 

Vavila first stopped his horse and then answered: 

“Nine days. When my Uncle Kiril died his soul 
went on living in our hut for thirteen days.” 

“How do you know that?” 

‘Because we heard a thumping in the stove for thir- 
teen days.” 

“Very well. -Go ahead!” said the old man. He 
evidently did not believe any of this. 

The carts turned into the highroad near Kuzmenok, 
and Lipa proceeded on foot. Day was breaking. The 
huts and the church of Ukleyevo were hidden in mist 
as she climbed down into the ravine. The air was chill, 
and she seemed to hear the same cuckoo calling. 

The cattle had not yet been driven out when Lipa 
got home. Every one was asleep. She sat down on 


IN THE RAVINE 307 


the door-step to wait. The first to come out was the 
old man and he saw at a glance what had happened, 
For a long time he could not utter a sound and only 
stood mumbling with his lips. 

“Ah, Lipa!” he cried at last. “You did not take 
care of my grandson!” 

Varvara was waked. She wrung her hands and 
burst into tears and at once began to care for the 
little body. 

“He was a pretty boy,” she said. “Oh, tut, tut! 
you had only one boy, and you did not take care of 
him, little stupid!” 

A requiem mass was sung for the baby both. morning 
and evening. He was buried next day, and after the 
funeral the guests and the clergy ate a great deal, as 
greedily as if they had not tasted food for an age. 
Lipa waited on the table, and the old man raised his 
fork on which he had impaled a salt mushroom and 
said to her: 

“Don’t grieve for the baby. The kingdom of heaven 
is for such as he.” 

Only after the guests had departed did Lipa fully 
realise that Nikifor was gone for ever, and as she real- 
ised it she burst into tears.) She did not know into 
which room to go to cry, for since the boy’s death she 
felt that there was no place for her in this house, that 
she was superfluous here now; and the others felt the 


same thing. 
“Here, what are you bawling for?” suddenly shouted 
“a 


308 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


Aksinia, appearing in the doorway; she was wearing a 
new dress for the funeral and had powdered her face. 
“Be still!” | 

Lipa tried to stop but could not and sobbed louder 
than ever. 

“Do you hear me?” cried Aksinia, stamping her 
foot in great wrath. “Whom amI speaking to? Quit 
this house and never set foot here again, you convict! 
Begone!” 

“Come, come, come!” said the old man anxiously. 
“ Aksinia, calm yourself, my daughter. Of course, she 
is crying, her baby is dead.” 

“‘Of course, she is crying!” mocked Aksinia. “Let 
her spend the night here, but after to-morrow let her 
not dare to show her face here again! Of course, she is 
crying!” she mocked once more and laughed and went 
into the store. 

Early next morning Lipa walked back to Torguyevo 
to her mother. 


IX 


The roof and doors of the store are painted now and 
shine like new; gay geraniums blossom in the windows 
as before, and the happenings of three years ago are 
almost forgotten in the house of the Tsibukins. 

Now, as before, the old man is still called master, 
but, as a matter of fact, the business has all passed into 
Aksinia’s hands, She buys and sells, and nothing can 


IN THE RAVINE 309 


be done without her sanction. The brick-yard is 
working well; bricks are needed for the railway, so 
that their price has gone up to twenty-four roubles a 
thousand. The women and children haul them to the 
station and load them into the cars, and for this they 
get a quarter of a rouble a day. 

Aksinia has gone into partnership with the Hrimins 
and their brick-yard is now called “ Hrimin’s Sons and 
Co.” A tavern has been opened near the station and 
the expensive accordion is played there now instead 
of at the factory. Thither the postmaster, who has 
opened a business of some sort himself, often goes, and 
thither goes also the station-master. 

Hrimin’s Sons have given the deaf boy a gold watch, 
and this he pulls out of his pocket from time to time 
and holds to his ear. 

It is said of Aksinia in the village that she has ac- 
quired great power, and in truth one is conscious of 
this as she drives to the brick-yard every morning and 
gives her orders there, handsome and gay, with a naive 
smile on her lips. Every one fears her at home, in the 
village, and at the brick-yard. When she goes to the 
post-office the postmaster jumps up from his seat and 
says: 

“Kindly sit down, Madam Aksinia!” 

A certain landowner, a dandy in a coat of light cloth 
and high patent-leather boots, who was selling her a 
horse one day, was so enchanted by his conversation 
with her that he came down in his price to her figure. 


310 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


He held her hand for a long time, looked into her gay, 
wily, naive eyes, and said: 

“*T would do anything in the world to please a woman 
like you. Only tell me when we can meet without 
being interrupted.” 

“Whenever you like.” 

This elderly dandy now comes every day to drink 
beer in the store, horribly bad beer, as bitter as worm-. 
wood, but he shudders and drinks it all the same. 

Old Tsibukin no longer has a share in the business. 
He does not keep the money himself because he cannot 
tell true coins from false, but he says nothing of this 
and never mentions his weakness to any one. He has 
become forgetful of late, and if food is not offered him 
does not ask for it. The household has grown used 
to dining without him, and Varvara often remarks: 

“Our old man went to bed again last night without 
eating anything.” She says this with equanimity be- 
cause she is used to it. For some reason he always 
wears his fur coat both winter and summer, and only 
stays at home on very hot days. As arule, he puts on 
his coat, turns up his collar, wraps himself up, and 
walks about the village and up the road to the station, 
or else he sits motionless from morning till night on a 
bench at the church door. 

The passers-by bow to him, but he does not return 
their salute because he still does not like peasants. If 
any one asks him a question he answers sensibly and 
politely but shortly. 


IN THE RAVINE 311 


There is a rumour in the village that his daughter- 
in-law has driven him out of the house and won’t give 
him anything to eat, and that he lives entirely on 
alms; some rejoice at this, and some pity him. 

Varvara has grown still stouter and fairer; she still 
does her little deeds of charity and Aksinia does not in- 
terfere with her. There is so much jam now that they 
cannot finish it all before the new berries come in; 
- it turns to sugar and Varvara almost weeps, not know- 
ing what to do with it. 

They are growing forgetful of Anesiut There came 
a letter from him once, written in-verse on a sheet of 
paper like a pethtion: it was in the same familiar, 
beautiful handwriting; evidently his friend Samorodoff 
was serving his sentence with him. At the end of the 
verses a single line was scrawled in a rough, almost 
illegible hand: “I am ill here all the time; it is very hard; 
help me, for Christ’s sake.” 

One bright autumn evening T pilalis was sitting at 
the church door with the collar of his fur coat turned 
up so that all that could be seen over it was his nose 
and the peak of his cap. On the other end of the long 
bench sat Elizaroff the carpenter, and beside him was 
Jacob the watchman, a toothless old greybeard of 
seventy. Bony and the watchman were gossiping to- 
gether. 

“Children should provide food and drink for the 
aged—honour your father and your mother,” Jacob 
was saying with irritation. “But his son’s wife has 


312 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


driven her father-in-law out of his own house. The 
old man has nothing to eat or drink—where can he go 
for it? This is the third day that he has been with- 
out food.” 

“The third day!”’ marvelled Bony. 

“There he sits and never says a word. He is grow- 


ing weak. Why keep silence? She ought to be ar- | 


rested!” 

“Who has been arrested?” asked Bony, not hearing 
aright. 

“What’s that?” 

“The woman isn’t bad; she’s a hard worker. A 
business like theirs cannot be run without that—with- 
out sin, I mean.” 

“Out of his own house!” Jacob continued irritably. 


“She first gets a home, and then chases every one out 


of it! She’s a terrible woman, I declare! A pest!” 

Tsibukin listened without stirring. 

“What difference does it make whether one lives in 
one’s own house or in somebody else’s, as long as it is 
warm and the women don’t scold?” chuckled Bony. 
“T used to grieve terribly for my Anastasia in my 
young days. She was a gentle woman. She used to 


say continually: ‘Buy a horse, husband, buy a horse! 


Buy a horse, husband!’ When she was dying she was 
still saying: ‘Buy yourself a racing cart, husband, so 
that you won’t have to walk!’ And I never bought 
her anything but gingerbread.” 

“Her husband is deaf and stupid,” Jacob went on 


Se ee ea a ee m 


IN THE RAVINE 313 


without heeding Bony, “the same as a goose. How 
can he understand what’s going on? If you hit a goose 
on the head it still won’t understand.” 

Bony rose to go back to his home at the factory and 
Jacob rose with him. They strolled away together, 
still talking. When they had gone about fifty paces 
Tsibukin rose and crawled after them with uncertain 
footsteps, as if he were walking on slippery ice. 

The village was already sunk in the shades of eve- 
ning, and the sunlight fell only on the summit of the 
cliff and shone on the upper end of the road that wound 
snakelike down the steep incline. Some old women and 
children were returning from the woods carrying bas- 
kets of mushrooms. A crowd of women and young 
girls were returning from the station, where they had 
been loading the cars with bricks, and their cheeks and 
noses were powdered with red brick-dust. They were 
singing. At the head of the procession walked Lipa 
singing in a high voice, warbling her song as she looked 
up to heaven as if she were exulting that the day was 
done and the time for rest had come. Her mother, 
Praskovia, walked in the throng carrying a little pack- 
age in her hand, breathing heavily as she always did. 

“Good evening, Elizaroff!” cried Lipa as she caught 
sight of Bony. “‘Good evening, daddy dear!” 

“Good evening, little Lipa!” rejoiced Bony. “Little 
women, little girls, won’t you fall in love with a rich 
_ old carpenter? Ho! ho! Oh, my children, my chil- 
dren!” (Bony sobbed.) “My dear little hatchets!” 


He eRe 
Bk We | 
$14 STORIES OF RUSSIAN LIFE 


Bony and Jacob continued on their way and the 
girls could hear them gossiping together. After pass- 
ing them the crowd met Tsibukin, and suddenly all 
were hushed. Lipa and Praskovia slackened their 
pace, and when the old man came up beside them Lipa 
bowed low and said: 

“Good evening, sir!” 

The mother bowed also. The old man stopped and 
looked at them in silence; his lips trembled, his eyes _ 
filled with tears. ‘Lipa took a slice of pie with porridge 
from the package her mother held and gave it to the 
old man. )He took it and began to eat. 

The sun had gone down; its light had faded from the 
road; the evening was dark and chill. Lipa and Pras- 
kovia continued on their way and kept crossing them- 
selves for a long time after the encounter. 


ay Satan 
_ te eis 
Ee 


WL 


